Just Another Word for 'You'
by Gabi-hime
Summary: TMGS1L Himuro Reiichi x Heroine. The most romantic stories involve head trauma.
1. Sometimes It's Not So Easy

**Just Another Word for 'You'**

_Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side First Love_

_Himuro Reiichi x Heroine_

_**By Gabihime at gmail dot com**_

__Part One: Sometimes It's Not So Easy_ **  
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><p>There was nothing for Yumeno Midori but the leaping, intense turn of the music that rippled out from her hands, that she felt resonating through her body from the tactile contact points of her jaw and shoulder, the music that was born from the practiced, subtle application of fingers on strings, drawn out by the rhythmic threading of a brazilwood bow. The autumn sun had warmed the top of her head, and a crisp breeze rustled her hair lightly around her face, but she had no thoughts beyond the sound and its making. Her regular practice room was the rooftop of Habataki Gakuen, and her regular practice time was the latter part of her lunch period. It wasn't her only regular practice time, of course. She inevitably practiced for hours each day: at home, on the rooftop, and in the music room, preforming a balancing act between her violin, the piano, and the flute that sometimes felt impossible to maintain. When she took a break from practicing her serious instruments, she played the recorder for her own enjoyment, but this she allowed only sparingly, after her real work was done. For Midori, music was naturally created through the compound of sound and enjoyment. Music was her life, her joy, and her way of pouring out her feelings to the world. But because music was beloved did not mean it came easily. Although she was correctly labeled a musical genius and a prodigy, Midori had long understood that her music only came through hard work and constant practice and application. How she would have responded to a question of whether it was worth all the time, all the hard work, all the frustration and difficulty - the feeling of raw joy that overwhelmed her each time she succeeded in playing a piece wrought with her own sense and emotion - this was worth overcoming difficulties and sorrows a thousand times more harrowing. Music was not a simple pleasure for her. It was as necessary for her continued existence as oxygen. Without music, her soul would have suffocated.<p>

Midori had a hard time communicating her feelings honestly to the other members of the brass band, who often assumed she had to do nothing to achieve her brilliant sound, simply because 'she was a genius.' She was sure that they thought her sound was the cause of accident as opposed to practice and careful refinement, and this upset her. She was gifted, and her gifts had been nurtured from an early age because she was fortunate enough to have adults around her who recognized those gifts and valued them. She was grateful for her fortune in having the support of her family, but the music would not have come to her if she had not fought hard for it every day. It is hard to be told that everything is given to you when you are working as hard as you can to better yourself. Music was her life, and had been since she was a very small girl. She devoted hours and hours to it, and as such, she had absolutely no time to do the sorts of things that the other students did with themselves after school and thought of as regular expressions of their high school life. She did not have time to work a part time job, or to go shopping at the mall. It was probably best that she had no time to go shopping, because having no time for a part time job meant she was perpetually broke, as she had no positive monetary inflow other than her allowance. She allowed herself to indulge in two hobbies besides the recorder, which were watching late night dramas on television occasionally, and reading long series of manga about comedic high school romance. As she had not had any sort of normal Japanese education before high school, she treated these comedies as if they were accurate, factual representations of high school life, no matter how ridiculous they were. Thus had come her positive obsession with 'building precious memories' with her 'cherished schoolmates.' So Midori worked like a bee and regulated her time as carefully as possible, so that she would have time to build her memories even between balancing the piano, the flute, and the violin - oh, and of course, the other precious, treasured thing in her life.

But this troubling attitude from the other students in the band was one of the primary reasons she usually practiced on the roof during school hours, and only went to practice in the music room after school had finished and it was empty, or empty save for Himuro Reiichi, who often also stayed late to use the room himself. They had had to work out a time share of the room at the beginning, when he was not yet ready to let her experience his music. Although she was not privy to this information, as Himuro had come to know her, to know her heart and her music, their meetings in the room became both habitual and soothing for him. They became accustomed to using the space together, two alone and content, except when brass band practice necessitated that they share their space with the other members of the ensemble.

Of course, it was impossible for the other students not to recognize that she had become his pet, and she knew that it was commonly thought she got special treatment because of her status as a genius. She could not help but overhear the girls when they talked about it. She had tried to explain their misunderstanding at first, but had given up when she realized that they were unwilling to listen to her, as they had already decided she was spoiled and stuck-up. The boys generally treated her with gingerly awe, but none were particularly close to her, despite her overtures. Perhaps they feared the wrath of the girls who were dead-set against her. Aside from a few friendly sempai, she was not particularly popular in the band. That a wedge had been driven between her and the other members of the brass ensemble made her sad, but it was not something she knew how to change. She was generally well-liked among the regular students, and so she dwelt on this as opposed to wallowing in the knowledge that except for Himuro Reiichi, she was somewhat _unwelcome _in the band. Truthfully, she was not sure she could come to be friends with some of the girls in the band anyway, even if they understood she was not hostile and did not want to fight. Midori suspected several of them had joined the band for no other reason than that Himuro was the director. She based her suspicions primarily on her observations about the time they spent practicing (contrasted with the time they spent mooning over the director), their dedication to music (as opposed to their dedication to the sovereign nation of Himuro), and also on the chocolates that they had attempted to force upon him unsuccessfully in February. These girls were a cabal of which she was not a part, and to which she was very much uninvited. They had formed a sacred bond based on their fanatical affection for her sensei, and their common experiences of being rejected, because they thought his constant rejections were an integral part of his charm. They tolerated one another because they found themselves to be all roughly equal in Himuro's estimation, and she was therefore their arch-nemesis. Midori wasn't _exactly_ resentful of them, because she could afford not to be. The only chocolates Himuro had accepted on Valentine's Day had been the ones she had carefully prepared with her own hands, and although he had sworn her to secrecy, she thought they suspected. She was something different than they were, and they knew it, and she knew it. She might have faced some sort of bullying if not for her younger sister's preeminent reputation as an ojou-sama. As it was, Midori did her best to avoid them when friendly sempai or her beloved sensei were not around to check their actions.

After all, she knew that when it came to music, Himuro was harder on her than on any of the other members of the band. This was because he had high expectations of her, and a faith in her abilities to become even stronger by being put through seemingly impossible trials. She accepted this as a sign of his care, although it made her time with the flute much more trying than it might have been otherwise. She had been trained as a violinist from the time she was five years old, and had begun to learn the piano at seven. The flute was a much more recent adoption. She had been playing it for only three years, and had chosen to learn it for a specific reason: so she could have the experience of being a regular member of the school band and build lots of precious memories. It might have remained a hobby instrument for her, much as the recorder was now, if not for the overwhelming force of Himuro's personality and his exacting demands for excellence. He demanded perfection, and therefore she strove for it with all her will, and so between the violin and the flute, and occasionally the piano, she had no time in her life for anything but music (and fortunately, Himuro Reiichi, by association). Although this was 'special treatment,' it was not really the sort of thing she thought the other students in band imagined (or would have wished upon themselves).

Because Midori had to find time to practice both the violin and the flute each day, as well as do the mountains of extra homework he was always giving her, she always gave up most of her lunch to the dedicated practice of the violin. It was the only way she could make time for everything. Thus the lunch hour found her devoted to a Mendhelssohn concerto she was struggling to reproduce in her own voice. She had been lost in the contemplation and practice of her music for some uncountable amount of time when the mobile phone in her pocket began to vibrate - her warning that the lunch period was closing and that she had best pack her violin if she wanted to avoid being tardy for class. She rested herself for one still moment of peace after the sound of music, and then she opened her eyes and lowered her violin.

It was then that she noticed him standing there, leaning against the outer wall of the stairwell, his arms crossed over his chest. How long he had been standing there, listening to her practice she really could not say, as she had been wholly focused on the music. She smiled and waved at him, to which he had no visible reaction, and then she knelt to pack away her violin carefully in the hard white case she kept it in. After shouldering it, she moved to meet him at the door to the stairwell, where he still waited.

"It's beginning to sound better," Himuro said to her, without bothering with a greeting. "Although it still sounds too harsh in many places. Don't let the brightness of your tone overwhelm the subtle beauty of the music. It already has a vibrant pace, so you must be thoughtful in your application of vibrato, and discover how to create the perfect sound yourself." For him, that was the music of Yumeno Midori: brilliant, moving, technically proficient, but still wild and in need of polish.

"Yes, captain!" Midori answered his advice smartly, and saluted. Himuro was always striving to offer her accurate and helpful criticism, even when he listened to her play the same notes over and over again, in seemingly endless repetition. Although Midori did not know precisely how long he had been standing there and listening to her play, she knew her sensei, and she knew that he knew her. Since he was well aware of her habits, she imagined that he had been standing there unnoticed for most of the lunch period. That he was willing to give up time he would have otherwise spent on himself, indulging in the passionate pastimes of grading papers and devising test questions, warmed her heart and reminded her of just how carefully he looked after her. Like the joy of her music when it was born with the right feeling, the silent care of Himuro Reiichi was something that made all the toil and difficulty worth it.

Himuro made a small sound in his throat that she recognized as a laugh in response to her smart salute, and then moved to hold open the heavy stairwell door for her.

Midori stopped to wait for him at the top of the stairwell, because this was a part of their routine. He would come up behind her as the door to the roof swung closed slowly on its hydraulic hinges, and they would speak for a moment about subjects other than music. Then they would descend the stairs together and head toward their respective classes. She was not disappointed, because he briefly touched her shoulder - an indication he wanted to talk.

"Yumeno," Himuro began formally, his tone a little strained, "The forecast for Saturday night is clear, so if you are free I would like to take you to see the October Draconids. We will make this a practical astronomy lesson."

"Oh, yes," Midori responded immediately, her surprised delight causing her speak before she had prepared anything of substance. She had still not become accustomed to Himuro asking her to spend time with him on weekends, despite the fact that he had begun to habitually indulge in this practice recently. Her sensei had occasionally asked her on various outings in the times before, but beginning in the early autumn term he had become quite dependable in asking for her company most every weekend, always carefully couching his requests in the language of education, no matter what it was he wanted to do. That this was not the first time he had asked her did not make her any more capable of taking his asking for granted. "Of course, sensei. I don't have any plans." She never had any plans, because she had learned to keep her schedule open for him. "I would love to go see the meteor shower with you. Will we go back to the place we went star-watching before?" Midori asked, "I could pack some sandwiches for us, if you like."

"I think that would be acceptable," he began, moving his hand in a short, practical motion to indicate that he was ready to descend the stairs, since she had answered his request favorably. "Yes, we'll be going back to the promontory. It is an ideal location."

Midori moved ahead of him as he indicated and let her foot come to rest on the first stair. Her mind was filled with questions about what sort of sandwiches he might like to try when she felt her stomach drop as her foot skidded underneath her on the rubber lip of the second stair. Falling under the spell of vertigo, she lost her balance as the entire lip came loose from the step and sent her spilling forward, headlong, down the dizzying flight of stairs.

Midori's eyes widened in terror as she realized she had absolutely no way of catching herself or slowing herself. The railing was already too far out of reach because her hand hadn't been on it when the step had given way. She was helpless before gravity, and not athletic enough to control her fall and limit her injuries. It was inevitable that she was going to hit the stairs multiple times before she came to a stop against the wall below, and she knew with a sick fear that such a fall could hurt her badly enough to destroy her ability to play music, even if it did not successfully kill her. All of this flashed into her mind the moment she slipped away, and her fall became inescapable and unstoppable. She heard someone call her name and then swear, but it sounded like it came from a long way away. She was already lost.

But then something happened that she did not understand, and she felt herself seized and twisted in the air, her body wrenched unapologetically close, and her face pressed hard against warm fabric that was filled with a strangely familiar scent. There was a long-fingered hand protectively cupping the back of her skull.

And then they hit the ground.

The impact knocked the wind from her and left her dazed for several seconds, although as she came to herself her brain indicated to her that she was not as damaged as she ought to be, given the circumstances. She struggled to sit up, but there was something heavy on top of her, and it was at this moment that her dazed mind managed to understand that the heavy things she was tangled in were Himuro Reiichi's arms. He had lunged after her as she had fallen and fallen himself, instinctively wrapping her body close to his that he would take the brunt of the impact.

And taken the brunt of the impact he had. He was as still as death.

"Sensei? Sensei?" she sought some sort of response from him frantically, using all her strength to roll him off of her and onto his back. He neither moved nor spoke, and he looked terrifyingly still lying there with his broken glasses and half-shut, unresponsive eyes. She could feel the hysteria building in her heart and stomach and she could not help but pitifully wail, "I've killed Himuro-sensei!" She was not sure that he was breathing, and having no practical experience at all with first aid she was not sure what to do first, other than check for his pulse, which she fumbled for, murmuring, "_Reiichi, Reiichi, Reiichi,_" incoherently over and over again, trying her hardest not to break down into panic-stricken tears, "_Reiichi, please be all right. Reiichi, Reiichi_ - "

"Reiichi-san," Himuro corrected her weakly, raising one hand to rest it heavily on her head. He blinked slowly, then his eyes focused on her. "Are you hurt?" he asked and she shook her head furiously in response. "Good," he said, and seemed satisfied.

"Are you hurt?" she asked idiotically in return, because she could not think of anything else to say.

"Yes," he answered her very slowly. "I think I probably am."

She looked at him then, sprawled against the wall on the landing where they had both been dashed by the impact. He had spent himself cradling her body as best as he could manage against his own, had not bothered about protecting his own head from the crash. His broken glasses were still hanging askew on his face, as he did not seem capable of removing them on his own. She carefully took them off of him and folded them away in her pocket, as if his broken glasses might still have some use. Truthfully, it was as simple as this: she could not bear to leave them to be thrown away. Midori looked over her shoulder for a moment at the impossible height they'd fallen from. When she turned back to him she realized that in addition to her body, he'd also protected her precious violin, which could have easily been broken in the fall, despite the hard case it was in, had either of them landed on it. But there it was in his other arm, a trophy he had paid for with his own blood. He had caught her in one arm, and grabbed after her violin with the other, somehow keeping them both from being injured, at an obvious cost to himself.

She moved the violin off of his arm and found his wrist was bent in what she felt was a worryingly awkward position. "Sensei, what made you do such a stupid, reckless thing? I can't believe it. You threw yourself down the stairs!" she exclaimed, completely helpless to understand his motivations. That he had wanted to protect her she could understand in an immediate and overwhelmingly emotional way. That he had chosen to do it the way he had was something she could not yet grasp.

Midori wisely chose not to disturb the hand and wrist that were bent awkwardly and helped him to sit up by putting her shoulder under his other arm.

Himuro was slow to answer her again, and at last he said only, "It was the best thing I could think of in the situation."

Midori sighed, because she did not have the heart to scold him, not when he had paid such a price. The price was paid already, and there was no use admonishing him about it. It could not be gotten back, and she was honestly grateful. She had to concentrate on what to do from here on out. Midori knew that he needed help, and she was torn between leaving him to go and fetch it, and staying with him in his needfulness. The desire to stay with him won out, because she could not imagine deserting him while he was in such a state, even if she left him only to fetch help. She did not rightly know if this was the correct decision, but it was the only decision she felt she could make.

"We need to get you to the nurse's office," she told him gently, and because she was not sure that he was capable of maintaining his balance on his own, she continued with cheerfulness contrived to conceal her unease, "Do you think you can stand up if I help you, sensei? I'll be right here beside you. I want you to lean on me."

"I think I can stand up," he confirmed after a moment of apparently thinking about the question, and then he began to struggle to get to his feet. She did her best to support him, although she found the weight of his tall frame difficult to bear. Somehow she stood up under the weight of a grown man like a stubborn little donkey, and helped him distribute his weight on his feet. She was just about to suggest they begin the slow walk to the nurse's office when Himuro suddenly pitched forward violently. She was terrified he would fall and strike his head, so she wrapped her arms hard around his middle as he doubled over and leaned back with all her body weight. Fortunately, Himuro caught himself, bracing one hand against his knees as he vomited uncontrollably on the tile.

She held onto him as tightly as she dared until he had finished throwing up, her fear about his condition threatening to break the emotional control she was fighting to maintain. She had no idea why a fall would cause him to vomit like that, and just the sight of him - the feeling of him - doubled over, unable to keep himself from throwing his lunch up all over the floor was terrifying, because this was a Himuro Reiichi who was not in control of anything, a Himuro Reiichi she had never seen before. She took a deep breath and held it in to keep herself from breaking down and then helped him stand again.

"Sensei," she started again kindly, "We really need to go to the nurse's office. I know it may be difficult, but just try to bear with it for me."

"I'm sorry, Midori," Himuro answered with an apology that she couldn't understand. As they began to walk, slowly, together, step by step, he continued. "This wouldn't have happened if I wasn't so weak."

She was immediately troubled by his uncharacteristic breach of etiquette - calling her by her first name was something he did not do because it broke one of his rules. She nervously attempted a joke that spoke perhaps a bit more of her fears than she intended, "This better not be some sort of deathbed confession to me, Himurochi."

"Well," he said as she leaned hard into the door that connected the stairwell to the second floor hallway, "I hope it's not."

Fortunately, the second floor hallway was not completely deserted as a few students still lingered, enjoying the final spare moments of their lunch break. Even in the thinly populated hallway, she and Himuro quickly attracted a crowd of astonished onlookers who seemed to be unable to do anything but gawk at the two of them, despite their obvious injuries. Midori was about to beg for assistance when a short and terribly serious girl shouldered her way through the crowd and stood like a strange mirror before her. She took one look at the situation and then wheeled on her heel, throwing her arm out imperiously.

"All of you disperse immediately. This situation will be handled appropriately. Right now this hallway congestion is not acceptable and may cause a delay in Himuro-sensei receiving treatment."

As if she had cast a spell, the crowd began to dissipate, looking back curiously over their shoulders as they went. The sophomore queen had spoken, and she was rarely disobeyed because it was not often that she demanded anything. Once she was assured that they were actually leaving, Satomi turned her attention immediately back to her sister. Hazuki Kei had come up beside Satomi as the crowd dispersed, and he immediately moved to shoulder Midori's burden, because as a tall, athletic young man, he was more suited to bearing it.

Midori moved to Himuro's other side and laid her hand gingerly on his upper arm, not knowing exactly where it was injured. He didn't draw away from her, nor did he give any indication that her touch caused him pain, so she looked sidelong at Kei and gave him a quiet warning. "Be slow and careful, Kei-kun. He may need to stop again unexpectedly to be sick." Then she turned her attention back to Himuro, "Sensei, we're taking you to the nurse's office now. Kei-kun is going to help you, so don't be afraid to lean on him."

"Don't leave, Midori," Himuro said urgently, his confused imperative indicating what it was that he clearly _wanted_. Then he seemed a little troubled as he corrected himself, "Yumeno. Yumeno-san."

"Of course I won't leave you, sensei," she laughed nervously, another attempt to cover her fear. She was touched by his simple desire to have her close to him in his weakness. "Don't be silly. I won't ever."

"Good," he answered distractedly after a moment, and at Midori's nod, she and Kei began to walk Himuro toward the nurse's office.

Satomi was immediately at her side, keeping pace with her.

"Explain," she demanded unceremoniously.

Midori began, as best she could, to relate what had occurred, her emotional resolve breaking as she began to describe what had happened in the moments after the fall.

"Midori, don't cry," Satomi scolded briefly, solemn, but not unkind, well aware that her sister was already overwrought, "Himuro-sensei wouldn't want you to be upset."

"I can't help it," Midori struggled to control her tears, remembering how Himuro had looked, struck like a dead bird against the wall, or when he had been doubled over, one hand braced against his knees. "How would you feel if Kei-kun were the one like this?"

Satomi said nothing immediately, then at last murmured, "I hope that Kei-chan wouldn't do such a thing." She said it low tone, and perhaps meant it only for herself, but Midori heard it and understood the feelings hidden in Satomi's quiet heart. If Kei heard it, he made no sign. It was possible that he didn't, being on the other side of Himuro and primarily occupied with his transportation. Himuro gave no indication that he was even cognizant of their conversation, although he was clearly conscious and capable of walking with support.

As they reached the stairwell down to the main hallway, where the nurse's office was located, Satomi skipped a few steps ahead of them and then said very clearly, "I will go take care of everything. Midori, remember to be a strong girl and not cry like you always do. Kei-chan, you take my sister and Himuro-sensei to the infirmary. I am trusting them to your care," she said deliberately, "I will see you there later."

And with this abrupt farewell, Satomi disappeared down the stairs first, going quickly, but holding onto the railing, as if she had taken warning from Midori's unfortunate story.

Midori sighed, her heart feeling a warming balm as she watched her sister go, "I always feel better when Satomi is with me. She's always so take-charge whenever there's a crisis. All I ever want to do is cry when something bad happens. I'm a bad onee-chan to depend on her all the time. I ought to be more level-headed because I'm the older sister. She's always, always been this way, even when we were both very little."

"She has," said Kei, and his voice was as calm as it always was, and this made it very difficult for Midori to determine if he had meant what he said as a question or a statement. It sounded like a statement, but -

"Himuro-sensei," Kei was speaking quietly, "We're going to go down some stairs now. We'll go slowly. We're close to the infirmary now."

As they began to slowly descend the stairs, Himuro gave her another imperative, sudden and a little sharp, "Yumeno. _Don't fall._"

"I won't, sensei," she tried to be encouraging, "I promise."

They were met at the bottom of the stairs by the school nurse, who helped Kei escort Himuro into the infirmary. Midori knew that this had been one of the things Satomi had left their company to prepare. That she was not waiting for them in the infirmary meant that she had apparently thought of more things that needed doing than Midori had.

In the infirmary, the nurse seated Midori down on a stool and then began to examine Himuro thoroughly. Kei had helped him to sit down on a bed, and he was tolerably obedient as lights were shined in his eyes and his reflexes were checked. The nurse asked several simple questions of him, which he answered correctly, if a bit slowly. As she worked, she asked for an explanation of the events that had led to his current state.

Midori told the story again as best she could, trying not to omit any detail, no matter how awful it was to remember, lest it be very important to diagnosing Himuro's condition. She became upset again as she spoke and might have started to cry if she had not remembered her sister's words of courage and felt Kei's hand on the top of her head, patting it as if she were a small child. The nurse wondered aloud at the story and turned a critical eye on Himuro.

"Himuro-sensei, I understand that you wanted to protect your student from being injured," she said, "But what you did was absolutely crazy. Any fall can be fatal, or cause serious trauma. They should be avoided at all costs. If you had landed badly, you could have both been killed."

"I suppose that's true," Himuro answered, but he did not seem particularly concerned with this admission.

The nurse sighed, seeing that her chiding would do no good in his current state, and gave up on that favorite pastime of the medical establishment: patient harassment.

Midori watched as the nurse, with Kei's assistance, helped Himuro out of his suit jacket, taking care not to jostle his wrist, which was already swelling in an alarming way. She then loosened his tie and began to carefully check him over again. After a moment, she moved to roll up both of his sleeves and became busy in the application of her treatments, the first of which was to apply a cold pack to Himuro's swelled wrist, the second of which was to prime a needle and prepare an injection for his uninjured arm. With this done, she helped Himuro recline against the pillows in the bed, and gave Kei the ambiguous command of "Talk to him."

Then she moved to close the blinds so that the afternoon sun was off Himuro's face, for which he thanked her.

All this accomplished, she turned her attentions to Midori, who was still sitting on her stool and sniffling.

Assuming that Midori's tears were the product of some concealed hurt, she leaned forward and spoke to her gently, as if she were an elementary school student, "Tell me where it hurts, little one."

This made Midori sniffle more as she sobbed out her confession, "It doesn't hurt anywhere at all, because sensei got hurt in my place, and now I'm afraid I've nearly killed him."

To this despairing confession the nurse could offer immediate comfort, "I understand that you're worried about him, but he's not as badly off as you think. In my opinion he has a sprained wrist and a mild concussion, and with bed rest he should recover in a couple of days. He'll probably have some bruises and be a little sore as well, which is good, because perhaps he'll think twice about throwing himself down the stairs in the future. Now be a good and brave girl and let me check you over, because even if you don't think there's anything wrong with you, you did take a terrible spill as well, and it's better to be safe than sorry."

The nurse drew the curtain between she and her sensei, and Midori patiently let herself be examined. The nurse was thorough but gentle, and filled with encouraging reassurances about Himuro's condition. Behind them, Hazuki Kei haltingly spoke with Himuro about topics she could not begin to imagine, as they were both pitching their voices low, and the nurse was very distracting. As Midori's examination progressed, Satomi arrived in the infirmary and peeked around the corner of the curtain, Midori's violin slung over her shoulder. A low, mellow voice indicated Amanohashi Ikkaku was in attendance on her as well, although he did not peek around the corner of the curtain in imitation of her sister. At last the nurse gave Midori a certified clean bill of health and the curtains were drawn back, revealing the six of them, gathered in the infirmary by curious circumstance.

"Himuro-sensei has a concussion?" Satomi asked promptly, before the nurse could go and properly greet the headmaster.

"Yes," the nurse admitted, "I believe he does."

"Then he will need to go to the hospital and be seen by a doctor," Satomi stated simply.

"Yes," agreed the nurse, a little baffled, "That would probably be for the best, considering he has a head injury, even if I believe it is a very minor one."

Satomi waved her hand simply and gracefully, indicating a dismissal of the nurse, and then turned her attention to the school's headmaster.

"Ikkaku-rijichou, will you be so kind as to escort Himuro-sensei and my sister to the hospital?"

Midori suddenly understood why Satomi had dragged the headmaster out of his office and down to the infirmary and gave her sister a grateful smile. Satomi, who was busy captivating the headmaster, allowed herself a small and secret smile in return.

"Of course, Yumeno-kun. It would be my pleasure to provide assistance in this situation," Amanohashi said graciously, and then turned to the somewhat befuddled nurse. "Is Himuro-sensei all right to travel to the hospital in a regular car, or should we call an ambulance?"

"He should be all right to travel in a regular car," she answered haltingly, unsure what to make of this strange gathering of silent high school power. "I gave him some anti-nausea medication earlier, so he shouldn't suffer from any further vomiting spells. I just need to tape up his wrist and he should avoid jostling it on the ride. Although, in the case of Yumeno-san, it is probably safe enough for her to stay here at school. I couldn't find anything wrong with her. I can just keep her under observation for the afternoon."

"It would be best for Midori-onee-chan to go to the hospital," stated Satomi categorically, and with such authority that the nurse did not feel capable of contradicting her.

"Very well then," said Amanohashi, quite ready to accept the privilege of responsibility bestowed upon him by Yumeno Satomi, "Himuro-sensei, are you feeling well enough to travel?"

"Yes," affirmed Himuro, "I'll be all right. I appreciate your concern, Rijichou." This time his response was quicker and he sounded more coherent than he had the last time he had spoken, so Midori's heart was calmed a little.

"Then, Hazuki-kun, will you please assist me in getting Himuro-sensei to my car? I'll go pull it around to the front circle."

Amanohashi left to retrieve his car, and Kei obediently assisted Himuro in getting to his feet after the nurse had taped up his wrist. The four of them moved in the direction of the school's entrance, leaving the overruled nurse alone in her infirmary. Midori followed at Himuro's side, carrying his jacket folded up in her arms, and Satomi brought up the rear, with Midori's violin still slung over her shoulder.

At the entrance of the school, while they waited for Amanohashi to pull in and park, Satomi moved in front of Himuro and bowed gravely.

"You don't have to worry about your afternoon classes, sensei. I have already put them on self-study."

"Ah," said Himuro in response, because Satomi's thoroughness apparently startled even him. Then, he recovered himself. "Thank you for troubling yourself, Yumeno-san."

"No," said Satomi, shaking her head once solemnly as Amanohashi got out of his car and moved to open the doors for his two passengers. Kei helped Himuro into the front seat of the car while Midori crawled obediently into the back. As Himuro secured his seatbelt, Satomi leaned in close to him and spoke very quietly.

"Thank you for protecting my sister."

Then she withdrew, and Kei closed both of the passenger side car doors.

As Amanohashi's car turned in the circle and drove off in the direction of the hospital, Satomi wordlessly reached for Kei's hand, and he gave it to her without comment.


	2. Don't Forget Who's Taking You Home

_**Just Another Word for 'You' **_

_Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side First Love_

_Himuro Reiichi x Heroine_

_**By Gabihime at gmail dot com**_

_Part Two: Don't Forget Who's Taking You Home_

* * *

><p>They were mostly silent as they made the drive from Habataki Gakuen to the hospital. Midori was still troubled by her sensei's injuries. Somehow, a head injury, even one that the nurse assured was very mild, was more terrifying than a serious injury to another part of his body. She would have been less consumed with worry if he had simply broken his leg, even if a broken leg would have taken considerably longer to heal. A broken leg she could understand on a basic level - such things happened often enough in her high school manga - but a head injury was mysterious and alarming. Based on her experience with head injuries in popular culture, her only expectations were that her sensei would loose his memory, experience a personality reversal, or possibly go back in time. She was therefore relieved that he seemed to remember her, was generally acting like himself, and had not unaccountably disappeared into the past. Midori was woefully aware that her knowledge of various medical conditions was very poor and tended toward the fantastic. Satomi had apparently suspected what was wrong with Himuro immediately, and dispatched herself to make preparations for his care. Midori felt she needed to be more like her sister: capable, unflappable, and in control.<p>

After all, she was now grimly aware that her sensei would not always be in a position to take care of her. Sometimes, she would have to take care of him. It was something that she was more than willing to do, but it was something that she perhaps did not yet have the skills to properly accomplish. Her mind was always filled with music, so it was sometimes surprising for her to her discover that a world existed aside and apart from music - or rather that there were things that existed, apart from music, that required patient practice, just as music did, and that some of these things were things she wished to be good at. Some of these things were things she felt she ought to be good at, for Himuro's sake. Her first discovery in this vein had been at freshman band camp, when her creatively conceived spaghetti udon had failed to impress. Because of this experience - and the report she had written as an apology - Midori had realized that she wanted to learn to cook, so that the food she made would cause him to smile as opposed to search for antacids.

Now she was realizing that she lacked another critical skill that was obviously required for the proper care of _Homo Sapiens Sapiens Himurochi_. That skill was basic first aid. She hoped she would not be called upon to make use of it that often. She was not wishing injury on him or on herself, but in the case of an emergency, she needed to be better prepared. Of course, Satomi had been there to help this time, but what if she wasn't there next time? The day was approaching soon enough when she and her sister's roads would diverge, and she would have to depend on herself in times of immediate crisis. Midori resolved to enroll herself in a first aid course as soon as it was feasible. Like cooking, learning what she needed to know would take time and practice, but in the end, it would make her more able to help him. She didn't want Himuro to think of her as a burden in times of duress. She wanted him to be able to depend on her.

While Midori was resolving to strike out into the world of medicine, Himuro was riding with his eyes closed and his head slightly bent. His nausea had subsided, but the bright afternoon sun continued to make his head ache as if it were filled with thousands of angry bees. Amanohashi, sensing Himuro's discomfort, had pulled down the sunshade on the passenger side. Himuro was grateful for this, but the pain in his head and the dull ache of his taped wrist made him unwilling to attempt conversation, and so he struggled to pass the time to the hospital in silence. Himuro found that he was happy that Midori was with them in the car, although he knew he was causing her to miss her afternoon classes for no other reason that his own selfishness. Despite his pain and discomfort, he was still preoccupied by his fears. He was sure in his heart that the moment he let her out of his sight that she would meet disaster. He was still shaken by her brush with death, that circumstance he had been nearly powerless to prevent. That she probably would not have died after experiencing such a fall he knew in his carefully analytical brain. That she _might _have been killed - that she _might _have died there on the second floor landing while he watched helplessly - it was enough to make him tremble in fear and frustration, even though he was a grown man. In other circumstances, he might have been less honest with himself about his reasons for wanting her there, but although his cognition had been a little fuzzy, he knew he had said it aloud, in front of Midori, her sister, and Hazuki Kei.

_Don't leave me, Midori._

Since he had already said it, already secured her promise to stay by his side, he felt he had no choice but to accept it. He wanted her there because having here there gave him some peace of mind. If she was within arm's reach, then she was not falling down a set of stairs, or stumbling out in front of a speeding bus. It was not that he thought she was incompetent. It was not as though he did not trust her. What he did not trust was the world, which he worried was out for her blood, out to capture and snuff this small, singular happiness - and this he knew was a paranoid delusion. No one was out to get Midori, and fate was not conspiring to take her away from him, but the threat had been very real and terrible, the idea of losing her mind-numbing.

_Because I love her,_ he thought distantly. _ Not like a pet. Not like a protégé. Not like a worrisome child who is always underfoot. Not like a genius whose gifts inspire awe._

But of course, he was unfortunately aware that he loved her in all those ways as well.

_The sum is greater than the parts_, Himuro thought abstractly.

He was still turning this thought over and over in his mind when Amanohashi pulled the car into the covered circle near the emergency room entrance. As they stopped, Himuro at last looked up from his lap, and what he saw made his heart sink.

"Is this Yamashita Hospital?" he asked flatly.

"Ah, yes," answered Amanohashi, "It is close to the school and an excellent facility. The Amanohashi family has close ties to this hospital." Reading some unease in Himuro's carefully flat tone, Amanohashi ventured to ask, "Is there something wrong, Himuro-sensei? I chose this hospital because it's nearby. I thought it would be best to limit the time you spent in the car, as you were obviously uncomfortable."

"There's nothing wrong, Rijichou," Himuro answered dumbly, moving to unfasten his seatbelt and unlock his car door for the orderly who was already approaching with a wheelchair. "Thank you for your concern."

Amanohashi was not convinced, but resolved that if Himuro was unwilling to admit to his problem, it was better not to press him about it, especially when he was obviously not feeling well.

"Yumeno-kun," the headmaster said genially, an attempt to allay Himuro's worries, whatever they were, "Will you go in and see that Himuro-sensei is admitted? I will go park the car and meet you inside."

"Of course, rijichou!" Midori answered with unexpected passion. She had been silent for the entire ride, so neither of the men had any idea how fired up she had become about the idea of taking care of Himuro.

Amanohashi chuckled generously, "Now I feel confident in leaving Himuro-sensei in your hands."

At this, Midori positively leapt out of the car and landed with both poise and resolve.

Leaning dispassionately in the wheelchair, Himuro could not help repeating it to himself:

_The sum is somehow greater than the parts._

* * *

><p>Midori collected a sheaf of paperwork concerning Himuro's admittance to the emergency room from one of the receptionists, and then returned to sit beside him in the waiting room as she shuffled through it, trying to understand exactly what information needed to be submitted to satisfy the clerical department of the hospital. This was something else she had never done before in her life: handled paperwork for someone at a hospital. She had never even thought about what might be required to do such a thing. She had never handled admittance paperwork for herself, being in good health generally and having experienced no major accidents before this one. She had been in the hospital twice while studying in Europe as a girl, but both times her parents had handled her admittance, making it so effortless that the paperwork seemed to magically fly away, leaving Midori safely in the care of considerate doctors and nurses who devoted themselves to caring for their sick little patient.<p>

As she studied the pages attached to the clipboard, Midori realized that filling them out completely and accurately would be anything but effortless, even to a completely able person. There were many blanks that required detailed responses: pages for contact information, billing address, primary physician, insurance provider - Looking sidelong at Himuro, who was still leaning on one arm of his wheelchair, his cheek propped against his fist, his eyes half-closed, Midori suddenly understood what a comfort it had been for her as a girl to have her parents look after complications like this when she was ill.

_Sensei doesn't have anyone like that,_ she realized, biting her lip. _He's an adult, so of course his parents don't come running when he goes to the hospital. They don't even know he's here now,_ she reflected. _I want to be able to do whatever I can to make it easier for him. _

She didn't want to help him because she felt she owed him for all the things he was always doing for her, throwing himself down the stairs to protect her being the least of it. Of course, she was grateful for all the thoughtful care he was always giving her, but she wanted to help him for no other reason than it made her happy to do so, and it made her upset when he was troubled or in pain. Midori flipped through the papers until she came to the top of the stack again, and took a deep breath, ready to do her best to conquer this new, unexpected obstacle in the way of her May-September romance: medical paperwork.

As she drew in her deep breath, steeling herself for the arduous task ahead, Himuro moved lethargically, waving her toward himself with his taped wrist, while not otherwise adjusting his slouched position, his palm still pressed against his cheek, supporting the weight of his head. His eyes were closed and he seemed more tired now than he had been at the school.

"Give it to me," he said flatly.

"What?" Midori asked, caught utterly flat-footed. The only thing she had that he might possibly want was the hospital paperwork, and she didn't think he was in any position to fill it out considering his concussion and sprained wrist. He opened his eyes a sliver and his pupils rolled sideways to look at her. It was strange to see him without the shield of his glasses. His eyes were vivid, the color of the summer sea. He did look tired, but he also looked focused, as if he had prepared himself for an ordeal.

"Give me that paperwork," he repeated himself. He sounded resigned. When she did not immediately move to obediently hand over the sheaf of papers, he closed his eyes again briefly as he sighed and then explained, "You can't expect to fill those out, no matter what your intentions may be, unless you just intend to make up the information you enter into the blanks. You don't know my address. You don't know my phone number. You don't know my personal insurance number."

"But sensei!" she protested, trying not to raise her voice for fear it would aggravate his headache, although she did flail the paperwork around to signify her distress. "You're not in any condition to do it! You slammed your head against the wall and you sprained your wrist! Besides, you don't have your glasses - "

"I'm myopic," he broke into her tirade deliberately, and waved again to receive the clipboard. "You know that. I will have no difficulty filling out that paperwork. You, on the other hand, have no idea what to do or write. Give it to me."

At this brusque dismissal of her services, Midori's lip quivered, although she was trying very hard to be a responsible and collected adult, if only for Himuro's sake. She wasn't ready yet to be any kind of help to him. She was just a burden and she was going to have to try harder -

"Yumeno," Himuro spoke quietly, his voice low and patient, "It's all right."

"I just want to be able to help you," she confessed helplessly, as she limply pushed the paperwork forward. Of course, her sensei was thinking of her before himself even now, in this situation, when he was in pain and feeling ill and facing a tedious chore -

_Absurdly, that's still what's most important,_ Himuro thought absently, at the same moment. _Even at a time like this: that she can smile._

"Being here," he said simply, "Is enough." As he finally sat up from his slouch to regard the clipboard, he added lowly, "I wouldn't want anyone else. Hold it still for me, and I'll fill it out."

"Yes, sensei," she answered dutifully, her heart a mess of emotions turning over and over on one another. At last she swallowed her worries and doubts and smiled for him as she held the clipboard still.

_Midori is here,_ Himuro told himself silently, as he dwelt for a moment over his patient information sheet. That she was with him, here at Yamashita Hospital, was both a blessing from a benevolent heaven and a curse dumped into his lap by a cruel god. No. That was ridiculous. His fate was his own, and not dictated by any god. This was just a deeply upsetting coincidence.

_Midori will -_

No, there was no use thinking about it. Himuro closed his eyes briefly and then resumed filling out his admittance paperwork with a grim expression.

* * *

><p>With the admittance paperwork completed, and after having been rejoined by Amanohashi, Midori, Himuro, and the headmaster were escorted by an orderly to an examining room, where a nurse took down even more information. The orderly helped Himuro out of his wheelchair and onto the table, where he sat pensive and uncommunicative. Amanohashi courteously offered the visitor's chair to Midori, who sat down obediently, studying her sensei with no small amount of worry. The nurse finished her preliminary questioning, wrote a number of things down on a report attached to a clipboard, and then departed, informing them that the doctor would be in to see them shortly.<p>

Midori chewed on her lip silently and watched Himuro for any signs of how he might be feeling.

He certainly did seem more tired and strained now than he had been at the school. The paperwork was already completed and the nurse's interview done, so Midori was unsure why he still seemed so tense, as if he were girding himself for some as yet unforseen calamity. It was possible that he was dreading the examination, but the nurse at school had already examined him thoroughly once, and he had been patient through all her prodding. She doubted he was worried about his condition. The school nurse had assured her that his concussion was not severe, and while his wrist was sprained, it was fortunately not broken as well. While Midori might hear all this and conjure terrible and lurid nightmares of her beloved sensei's untimely death, Himuro was very sensible and had likely accepted the nurse's diagnosis at face value. Of course, it was possible that the nurse had been wrong about his concussion, and that even now he was suffering more than he was letting on, for her sake, and that this was what was making him so silent and preoccupied.

She hoped desperately that this wasn't the hidden truth, but it was the only explanation she could think of for his behavior, and so silently brooded over it while Amanohashi attempted pleasant conversation with her. He was trying to distract her from her fears and discomfort, and so she did her best to answer him cheerfully when he asked her about her club activities and her musical studies.

As they talked, Himuro gave no indication that he was listening to them, and Midori smiled painfully as she glanced in his direction occasionally, trying to gauge what he was thinking and how he was feeling.

"You know, Yumeno-kun," Amanohashi was saying to her, "While I think it's wonderful that you're so devoted to your music and your studies, it's important to remember that the world is filled with many amazing things to see and experience. Even the painful things are worth experiencing, because they're the things that teach us how to be human. You shouldn't let the springtime of your youth slip by you, while you labor apart from the world. Now is the time to forge bonds with others that will last the whole of your life."

"The path of music will take her to all of those places, and let her experience all of those things," Himuro interjected quietly, without looking in the headmaster's direction. "Both the hardships and the joys. A musician is never apart from the world. A musician creates, loves, and nourishes the world every time he plays. Yumeno Midori will forge hundreds of unbreakable bonds as she grows, all through music. That is how some people live, rijichou."

Amanohashi watched Himuro as he spoke softly and earnestly without looking at either of them, then turned back to see Midori flushed, staring at her lap and fidgeting. She was apparently unused to such praise from her sensei, so direct and plain-spoken. Amanohashi smiled paternally at the top of her rosy head.

"I'm sure with such a good sensei to guide her steps that the path of music will take her wherever she needs to go," he agreed affably.

_This is already a bond that will last through pain and hardships, _the headmaster thought nostalgically. _ I don't think I need to worry about either of them._

As Amanohashi reflected on the two of them, student and teacher, Midori tired of staring at her lap and discreetly began studying Himuro again. Himuro kept quiet, apparently meditating on his own thoughts, or perhaps simply trying not to have them, given his headache.

They might have continued on in silence for some time, had they not been interrupted.

"I've found you," came a playful voice, and a dark head peered around the edge of the examining room curtain. The interloper was a young woman in a white labcoat, most certainly a doctor, who had soon invited herself among them, moving with easy confidence and natural poise, a clipboard gathered to her chest with one arm. Her sleek black hair fell past her waist and ended in a blunt, feminine cut; in collusion with her fair, smooth skin, she was easily a traditional Japanese beauty, although under the labcoat her clothes were both modern and fashionable, and she wore garnets in her pierced ears. Her eyes were curious and striking, a deep gold flecked with amber. They were the eyes of a tiger, or perhaps simply the eyes of a well-loved marmalade cat. There were a pair of chic glasses with red frames perched cutely on the top of her head, as if she had forgotten them there, which added to her overall _overwhelming _charm. She was apparently addressing herself to Himuro, who had not looked up to acknowledge her arrival.

"Hidemi," he said, his voice carefully controlled, his head bent, "_Not today._"

"Of course today," the girl-doctor pouted prettily, hands on her hips, "You're here, aren't you? Right now. In _my _hospital. I happened to see your name on the admittance list, and of course I had to come see you. I heard about what happened from the nurse. My poor Reiichi. Well, don't you worry, because Hidemi-chan is here now to make sure you get lots of excellent care!" she chirped enthusiastically. She crossed the room and leaned down to look at him as she spoke, and that great curtain of dark hair fell over her shoulder theatrically and nearly swept the floor. "Silly Reiichi. You should have just sent for me when you got here. Of course I'd find you. It's our fate," she was saying in a pleasant, sing-song voice.

Midori had begun to squirm in her seat at this pretty young doctor's first trilling '_Reiichi_,' and when the lady invaded his personal space, Midori found herself unable to contain her frenetic discomfort any longer.

_"I don't think we've met,"_ Midori blurted out all in one breath, in a tone that was more accusatory than welcoming.

The young doctor turned her head to regard Midori at this outburst, as if she had only just noticed her, and they stared at one another in silence for a slow moment that was counted by a pulse of hot blood in both of their temples.

Amanohashi coughed, feeling that the resulting silence was both unintentional and awkward. At this, the young doctor withdrew from Himuro's personal space and stood with her hands folded demurely in front of herself, clasped around the clipboard.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. I've been very rude," she said, tilting her head prettily to the side, "I'm Reiichi's first love." She paused as she sweetly smiled and then bowed briefly, "And his fiancée. My name is Kobayashi Hidemi."

The words "first love," and "fiancée" had an immediate effect on everyone in the room. Midori's heart stopped beating, and with it, all of her other biological processes stopped. It was as if she had been flash frozen with a look of incredulous horror on her face. Amanohashi found himself somehow embarrassed for Himuro and flushed. It wasn't as if Kobayashi-sensei had said anything untoward or inappropriate, and the way she had revealed the information had been charming and adorable, but something about the way she stood, the way she spoke, it was as if she were gleefully revealing all of Himuro's most intimate secrets. In Himuro's case, his knuckles had become white as he gripped the edge of the examining table.

"Hidemi," he barked a short, angry answer, "When you say things like that it is misleading. Neither my student nor the rijichou are in any position to appreciate your jokes."

"_Rei-ichi_," she drew out his name in a playful pout, "I know you don't feel well, but please consider my feelings too. Of course I would never joke about something so important." She gave the other two occupants of the room a lovely smile as she explained, "I'm Reiichi's high school sweetheart. We've been engaged for several years now, but he's so focused on his career that I've been made to wait and wait," she was pouting again in that sweetly seductive way. "I'm not worried though. For Reiichi, I'd wait forever," Hidemi confessed in a way that would have brought tears to the eyes of romantic manga fans. "Eventually, he'll give in and accept the fact that he has no choice but to marry me."

Amanohashi found himself even more deeply embarrassed when faced with Hidemi's further admissions, and continued to blush. Midori's soul, which had been tenaciously clinging to life inside her frozen body, at last gave up its tenuous hold, and she would have surely died right there, sitting primly in a vinyl chair, knees pressed together.

But then her sure death was averted by the cold anger that was barely constrained in Himuro's voice.

"_Hidemi. Stop it. Now_."

At this Hidemi fluttered her fingers delicately in front of her chest. "Oh, of course we don't have to talk about it if it makes you embarrassed, Reiichi. I'm sorry," she apologized, her eyes large and dewey with suppressed emotion, "It was very thoughtless of me to bring it up."

_"Hidemi,"_ Himuro barked her name again angrily, and the young lady doctor gave every indication she was about to begin crying due to his rough treatment of her.

The continued anger in Himuro's voice had grounded Midori's soul and allowed her to think again, as opposed to simply sitting in horrified shock while she was robbed of everything in the world that she wanted. Quickly assembling her observations together in her mind, she realized with a start that they did not add up at all. She refused to believe that she had misread Himuro's character so badly. She knew her sensei and she had faith in him. Midori could not help but feel that Himuro's behavior was all wrong toward this woman if she was going to believe what Kobayashi Hidemi had said about their relationship. Even if it were some sort of arranged engagement that Himuro had not consented to, and their high school romance had ended poorly - none of this could account for Himuro's behavior. It was not that he simply rejected her or denied her. He was _angry_. He was coldly, _actively_ furious, and this despite the fact that he was suffering from a concussion, and therefore was tired and given to being passive.

She thought back to what Hidemi had so gleefully announced earlier: _'Eventually, he'll give in and accept the fact that he has no choice but to marry me.' _Midori felt in her heart that this statement was wrong from the foundation up. It was a cruel and selfish thing to say, not something Midori would have ever said seriously to anyone in the world, let alone to the person she loved the most. Hidemi was talking about Himuro as if she _owned _him, not as if she loved him. Midori was utterly unwilling to give Himuro to anyone who would repeatedly treat him so badly, even if this person had the blessing of the Queen of England, the Pope in Rome, and the National Diet.

Therefore she stood and stared down Hidemi's crystalline tears grimly, and said, "Kobayashi-sensei, whatever your relationship with Himuro-sensei is, you are obviously upsetting him while he is injured. Please remember that as a doctor, your responsibility is to think of the needs of the patient before your own."

Hidemi stared at Midori, obviously taken back, the unspent tears still standing at the corners of her eyes, but then she recovered herself and was preparing a rejoinder when they were both startled by the sound of slow, congratulatory clapping. They both turned at once to see a broad-faced man in a white labcoat standing at the edge of the privacy curtain.

"That was well-said, young lady, and obviously correct," he said pleasantly, then turned his eyes to Hidemi. "There's no reason to needlessly upset a patient over personal issues. Now please, Kobayashi-sensei, let me have the patient's file. I understand that you are naturally curious, but he is not your patient, and I won't let you get away with ignoring procedure, even if you are our prodigy."

Caught in the act, Hidemi smiled prettily and begged apology, stating that she was simply concerned over Reiichi, and gave the older doctor the file that she had up until that point held against her chest. Midori gritted her teeth as she heard the young woman linger over her sensei's name so intimately, and was entirely unconvinced of the sincerity of the apology. The other doctor was apparently satisfied, however, and he told Hidemi that she could stay and assist with the diagnosis so long as she behaved herself.

"Of course, Yamada-sensei," Hidemi answered, apparently penitent.

Yamada studied the file that Hidemi had given over briefly, then commenced asking Himuro a series of questions about the day's events while he examined his pupils, tested his flexion, and prompted him to explain exactly how he was feeling. As the story came out slowly during the course of the examination, Midori could not help but feel that Hidemi had commenced to stare at her whenever her head was turned. She did not feel that the doctor was sending friendly looks in her direction.

Having finished his cursory examination of Himuro, Yamada-sensei leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, despite your best efforts, you'll live. I agree with your school nurse that you have only a mild concussion, and given your responses and my examination, I think there's no need for a CT scan, unless your symptoms worsen over the next few days. Your wrist is pretty badly sprained, and we'll preform an x-ray to be sure that you don't have any small fractures. I'll order a brace for your wrist to help protect it as it heals, provided the x-ray comes back clean with no broken bones."

Himuro nodded to this and acquiesced to the x-ray. An orderly helped Yamada escort Himuro to radiology, while Hidemi was ordered to stay behind and make pleasantries with Midori and the headmaster, if she had so much free time on her hands. Hidemi had tittered at this joke of Yamada's, and when the other doctor was gone attempted polite conversation with Midori, even going so far as to call her 'Midori-chan.' Midori soon realized that the older woman was fishing for information about her relationship with Himuro, and made sure her answers were pleasant, but bland and uninteresting. Amanohashi, sensing that the idle chatter was in fact strained, did his best to engage Hidemi in conversation, and she was soon delighting him with her well-mannered, girlish charms.

Midori ignored her and instead thought of her sensei, with his concussion and his sprained wrist. It was going to be difficult for him until he healed completely, and she resolved again to do her best to help him.

In due time Yamada and Himuro returned, Yamada having confirmed that Himuro's wrist was sprained but not fractured. The doctor oversaw as an orderly changed the wrappings on Himuro's wrist and then help him into his brace. With all of this done, and a few final scribbles noted down on the clipboard he carried with him, Yamada turned to the four of them and delivered his prognosis.

"Like I said, you're going to live, provided you follow my instructions," he warned ominously, then shrugged his shoulders, "The truth is, barring an act of god or your own gross incompetence, you'll live either way, but it'll be a lot easier on you if you follow my instructions. One of the things I would like to order is that you be kept under observation for the next few days." Yamada-sensei waved his hands. "Not medical observation, mind you, just observation. Although all signs indicate that your concussion isn't serious, there's always a chance further symptoms will surface for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. In addition, there is the possibility that you might injure yourself should you have another dizzy spell while going about basic household tasks. A second injury to the head soon after a concussion, no matter how minor, can be very serious, possibly fatal. Therefore I'm going to suggest you arrange someone to stay with you for at least the next two days. You should try to rest yourself, eat some nourishing food, and just relax. Luckily, your concussion isn't severe, for which you should count your blessings," the doctor warned sternly. "I'll give you a couple of anti-nausea pills to cover the next few hours, and some pain medicine for that wrist. You can take acetaminophen to help deal with the headaches. You, sir, should _take it easy_."

"Oh, Reiichi, if only I wasn't on call tonight," Hidemi started tearfully as soon as Yamada-sensei had stopped talking. "I would take you home right now and take care of you. But I can always come look after you as soon as my shift is over, don't worry - "

"You don't have to worry about it, Kobayashi-sensei," Midori said deliberately, getting to her feet. "I'll be the one looking after Himuro-sensei this evening. Papa has given me permission to look after him for as long as he should require it."

"But Midori-chan, I'm a physician, so I think I'm a _little _more qualified than you are to look after Reiichi," began Hidemi, but Midori was already interrupting her.

"Yamada-sensei said that Himuro-sensei just needed to be under observation, not medical observation," reminded Midori. _That woman is a snake, _she thought, _and therefore absolutely _dis_qualified from looking after Reiichi. If I leave him in her care, even for one night, he may well die. Or kill himself out of despair._

"But dear, you're just a high school student," Hidemi pressed sweetly, and again, Midori was ready with a counter, as if they were circling one another in a no-holds-barred cage match. Out of the corner of her eye, Midori caught Himuro's steady, half-lidded gaze and knew he was watching her, although she kept her eyes front, focused on her adversary, the deadly _moe onee-chan doctor_. Midori could only hope that she was acting with his will, and not against it. He gave her no indication of his support, simply left her to fight relying on no one's strength but her own. Of course he left her to fight using her own strength. That's what good coaches did, to help their athletes get stronger and stronger, and more and more able to fight. And he was her coach. _ He was her music coach._

"That's right," agreed Midori, full of inspired, schoolyard fire. "I'm just a high school student, which means I have more free time than a medical prodigy who's still in her residency."

This last statement was perhaps a little too biting for polite company, and Himuro said, "_Yumeno_," in response, a quiet, sure reprimand.

Reminded that she and the lady doctor were not actually engaged in a counter-grab in the squared circle, Midori gave Hidemi an artificial smile. "Of course I have the utmost respect for Kobayashi-sensei's time and work, which is why I think it simply makes sense for me to look after Himuro-sensei."

As if she were showing a rank amateur how it was done, Hidemi gave Midori a practiced and radiant artificial smile as she responded, "Of course. And I'm only thinking that it might be a little inappropriate for a high school student to spend the night at her single teacher's home."

_Single. Single. _ Midori's heart flew off like a jubilant bird, sailing through a pink sky filled with confetti and fireworks and studded with over-sized novelty stars. _Of course he's single. _

As her heart at last returned to her chest, Midori turned with serious, determined eyes to face Amanohashi, who had been watching her firefight with Hidemi with a neutral expression. Midori was a little embarrassed, because she knew very well she had not been acting the way a proper lady should.

_Even if she throws mud at me from her sparkling throne of fakeness, I shouldn't get drawn into throwing it back. I want to be a good person. _

She swallowed her embarrassment and her pride and put her next question to the rijichou humbly, although her determination to help her sensei still showed fiercely in her eyes.

"Rijichou, given the circumstances, and taking into account that I already have parental permission, do you find such a thing inappropriate? I'll only go if Himuro-sensei wants my help. If he'd rather someone else, I," she swallowed and kept her voice steady, "I won't mind. I just want to make sure he has someone to take care of him."

Experiencing her intense gaze coupled with her meek acceptance of Himuro's final judgement, Amanohashi's heart was moved. He knew in his gut how he had to respond as a headmaster, and answered with self-assurance.

"While it is not standard practice for me to grant permission for such a thing, given my experience with both Himuro-sensei and Yumeno-kun's characters, I see nothing inappropriate in her wish to look after him," he said, "In fact, I think it would be a great disservice to Yumeno-kun to deny her the opportunity to have this experience, simply because she is still a student. Assuming parental permission, and Himuro-sensei's acceptance, I give my wholehearted approval."

Amanohashi's confident pronouncement caused seventeen other headmasters to turn over in their graves, including two who were not yet dead, but he found himself rewarded by Yumeno Midori's relieved and grateful smile. Amanohashi Ikkaku was not a _common _headmaster.

"When exactly did you receive your parental approval, Midori-chan? I haven't seen you make any phone calls." Hidemi asked pleasantly and Midori could almost hear the sound of her sharpening a knife as she serenely spoke.

"I sent papa a message while Yamada-sensei was talking," Midori answered promptly, and drew her Excalibur: the small pink phone with the gecko charm attached to it, which contained one message granting parental permission from her father. She passed her phone over to Himuro for inspection. "He got right back to me. I'm sure my sister had already informed him of some of the details."

_Fast_, muttered Hidemi under her breath. Midori heard it, but she didn't think anyone else had, and Hidemi covered the sound with a light click of her tongue.

Himuro gave the phone a cursory examination, noted that it only had one bar of power, and verified that the message in question did come from Midori's father's cellphone. He passed the phone back to her.

"You can call him if you like," she volunteered shyly, still a little embarrassed that Himuro had had to watch her fight this terrible spider queen like a little cat.

"I know I can," answered Himuro shortly. "But I'm not going to, as I believe you."

_Thank goodness my phone had some power today_, Midori sent up a prayer of thanks to whoever was looking out for her. 'Completely out of power' was the normal operational state for her cellphone. She habitually forgot to charge it.

Himuro, for his part, had experienced enough of Midori's family to not doubt for a moment that her father had granted his daughter's dubious request without thought. Like the headmaster, the Yumeno-papa thought it was important for Midori to have as many 'experiences' as possible to build her character, no matter what those experiences were.

_I bet he'd let her jump out of an airplane, or try to pet a rabid animal,_ he thought resignedly. _In the end, I'm the one who has to be responsible for her._

"I would be happy to look after you, sensei," Midori went on haltingly, her eyes lowered uncharacteristically. "If that's what you want."

This time, their moment was spoiled by Yamada-sensei, who began to chuckle in amusement at the scene of high drama he had witnessed. "Honestly, I don't care who sits with you, Himuro-sensei. It could be your mother. It could be the pitcher for the Tokyo Giants. Just so long as someone sits with you, I'll be satisfied."

Himuro looked at Midori, whose chin was tucked in as she kept her eyes focused on the examining table so she wouldn't have to look at him. Even with a concussion and without his glasses, he could see that she was terrified of rejection.

_But how could I ever reject her after seeing her fight like that? _he wondered idly, and then at last completed the thought very quietly.

_For me._

"I accept," he answered simply, brushing his fingers absently against the bridge of his nose, although there were no glasses to adjust there.

* * *

><p>Although Midori was blissful at having triumphed over an <em>obvious villain<em>, she didn't let her elation keep her from carefully noting down Yamada-sensei's directions and suggestions. Hidemi continued to hang near Himuro as Midori received her instructions, chatting sweetly and amiably, but although Midori could not follow what they were talking about, Himuro seemed much less agitated with the doctor's antics than he had been before, and was answering her in what Midori fancied were disinterested monosyllables. Midori kept herself quite focused on what Yamada advised because she was so woefully aware of her own ignorance in this quarter. Yamada-sensei praised her careful attention to detail, and then reassured her that looking after her patient would be well within her skills once he learned that she was a capable cook.

"Just keep him off his feet," Yamada advised, "And while it's fine to let him rest, wake him up every few hours and have him answer a few simple questions to determine his cognitive capacity - although it's best to make sure he's fully awake before you panic that he thinks you're Napoleon," he guffawed. "Keep him in dim, but not dark, rooms. In a dark room he's more likely to fall over something and injure himself again if he stubbornly gets up against your orders - which he likely will at least _try_. Having a concussion is a little like being drunk. He's going to think he's perfectly capable of doing all the things he would normally do, but it's better to be safe than sorry. You be a good girl and wait on him for the next day or so, and make sure he keeps that wrist of his elevated. If he keeps quiet so he can heal up, he'll soon be back to normal, but you call immediately if any of his symptoms worsen, do you understand? This nausea should really be done with in the next few hours. If he keeps having vomiting spells after that, you call, no matter the time, you hear?" he insisted, and she nodded, her eyes wide. Yamada smiled at her, "But the prognosis is good, and you shouldn't have too much trouble, except from the patient himself. I can tell that he's a stubborn one, so you're going to have to use all your wiles to make sure he does as I have told him to and rests."

"Sensei," Himuro interjected dryly, "I can hear you."

Yamada turned to face him and put one hand on his hip. "Good," he declared, "I'm glad. Now maybe you'll do as I say and rest, because you're afraid of what she might do_ if you don't_." Yamada apparently thought this was deeply hilarious and enjoyed a long laugh at Himuro's expense. After he had finished with his merriment, he crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Himuro hard. "Seriously speaking, get some rest. It's for your own good and will put you on the path to a quicker recovery. I have faith in this girl. She will take care of you. Let her."

"All right," Himuro answered lowly, and Yamada seemed satisfied.

He turned back to Midori and gave her a few further instructions, secured her promise that she would not leave Himuro alone in the bath, where he was most likely to injure himself a second time, and gave her some suggestions as to what he might be willing to eat, considering his intermittent nausea. She dutifully recorded every word he said in the small appointment book she kept in her purse, both so she could reference it if she needed to, and also as a record that she could show Himuro should he become ornery about some of the doctor's sticking points. She made Yamada glance over her notes after she had finished and advised he circle the part about the bathroom and sign his name nearby, which he did.

Himuro watched their quiet conference dubiously, but as they had moved off into the corner of the room, he could no longer eavesdrop on their conversation. He patiently put up with Hidemi's chatter and repeated requests while Midori finished Yamada Nursing School. At last she closed her little book and put it back in her bag with her nearly dead cellphone and returned to his side.

"All set," she declared, and gave him her smile.

Himuro nodded in response, and did not protest when another orderly arrived with a wheelchair to escort him out of the hospital, although he felt well enough to walk by this point.

_I'll have to pick my battles carefully,_ he thought as Amanohashi left to bring his car around.


	3. Something Is On My Mind

**Just Another Word for 'You'**

_Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side First Love__  
><em>

_Himuro Reiichi x Heroine_

_**By Gabihime at gmail dot com**_

_Part Three: Every Time I Look At You, Something Is On My Mind_

* * *

><p>Even as they got into Amanohashi's car for the drive from the hospital to Himuro's home, Midori's mind was already working tirelessly, turning round and round, going over the numerous problems she faced as the sole keeper of an injured mathematics professor. She had to decide what to make for dinner. She should make a list to herself of the things she would need from home. She needed to make sure there was a bottle of acetaminophen for Himuro's headache, as well as ice for his sprained wrist. She needed to keep a close eye on him to gauge the severity of his symptoms, because she was not entirely sure he would always be forthright with her.<p>

Curiously, Himuro was reluctant to give Amanohashi his address while they were parked in the hospital's front circle, as if he were afraid of who might overhear it.

_I don't know who he thinks he's fooling, _she reflected philosophically. _It's not like I've been blindfolded. I'm going to be able to find my way back there even if he doesn't want me to._

Midori could not help but think of the similar reluctance Himuro had in giving out his cellphone number. Even when he called her, which was relatively frequently these days, the number always came up as 'unlisted.' Tsukushi even insisted that there wasn't a phone number on the official documents in his file at school, although how he could be certain of this, she did not want to know. Midori knew there were any number of girls at Habataki Gakuen who would have given several pints of their own blood for access to Himuro's phone number, so perhaps he simply didn't want to harassed by his adoring public. She did think it was a little harsh that he was still unwilling to trust her, even with his telephone number. She was _on his side_. But then, perhaps he had had a bad experience. In that case, her only course of action was to be as patient and kind to him as possible, and hope that he would eventually overcome his fears.

Fortunately, Amanohashi was easy-going, and willing to humor the strange requests of a man with a head injury. They turned out of the circle and onto the street, and after two blocks, Himuro divulged his address: a high rise apartment building on the lip of the bay.

_My house is only sort of on his way to and from school,_ Midori thought absently, but this was not what she said. She said, "Rijichou, if it isn't too much trouble, can you stop at a grocery on the way? I want to be sure I can make a simple dinner, so sensei will be able to keep it down."

There were no objections to this sensible course of action, so Amanohashi navigated them to a neighborhood grocery, and Midori hesitated only briefly in the back seat once they arrived. Amanohashi could not have imagined the reason behind her hesitation, but Himuro, who had again ridden in silence, his eyes closed against the bright light of day, was familiar with this particular problem. He unbuttoned his jacket without saying a word, and gave his flat black wallet entirely over to Midori, who received it with outstretched fingers and a look of awe, as if it were a holy relic.

Her cheeks flushed with determination, she answered his faith in her with passion, as if she might have been marching off to war. "Don't worry, sensei," she said, "I promise to be sensible and not spend too much."

"Just get what you need," he said tiredly, and Midori fairly leaped out of the car in response, and made for the door to the grocery as if she were a track sensation.

Amanohashi watched her go with a fond eye.

"She's a good girl," he said appreciatively.

Himuro made only a non-committal sound in response, and closed his eyes against the sun.

* * *

><p>Even after the starting-shot-thrill of her shopping expedition began to wear off, Midori could not help but feel a swell of pride and satisfaction as she made her selections, trying to move purposefully and efficiently, so she did not keep the two older men waiting in the car longer than necessary. She often did the shopping for the folks at home, or shared the chore with Satomi, but although she was going through the same motions as always - checking prices, noting what was on sale, looking at what produce was fresh - this shopping trip was unlike any other she had ever been on.<p>

She was buying groceries for Himuro-sensei.

She was buying groceries to make dinner for Himuro-sensei, in his own house, in his own kitchen.

She was buying groceries to make dinner for Himuro-sensei, in his own house, in his own kitchen, and she was going to pay for them with money from his own wallet.

For Midori, it was as good as a marriage licence.

So she hummed through selecting vegetables, and practically danced down the aisles as she bought tofu and other small necessities, and then after a moment of considerable worry, miso and soy sauce, rice, kelp, and bonito flakes. Her basket was heavier than she had intended when she at last approached the cashier, and she felt a little guilty because although she had done her best to be economical, she knew she was going to spend more than she had strictly meant to. This was because in the midst of her shopping, she had remembered the grim accounting Himuro had given her of what he usually ate. It seemed silly to buy rice and soy sauce when surely he already had them, but what if he didn't? What if he really only ate cheese and celery sticks? It would not be easy to construct a meal with cheese and celery sticks as the only ingredients, even in the best of circumstances.

She had committed herself to providing him with a simple, delicious, and easy-to-digest meal, and to do that, she had to have the ingredients to make it. If it did turn out that he already had these things, then she would reimburse him out of her own meager allowance and take the extra things home to her house, where they would surely be used in short order, as there were a number of hungry mouths to feed. This seemed fair to her, and so she charged deliberately ahead, through the gauntlet of the checkout line.

When it was all counted up, she ended up with two bags of groceries, which was rather one more bag than she had intended, but because of her frugal shopping, the bill was not as bad as she worried it would be, and she had quite enough cash on hand in his wallet to pay for it. She paid it blissfully, feeling very grown up and domestic, and then struggled happily out the door under the burden of her two bags of groceries.

Amanohashi got out of the car to help her with them as soon as she appeared on the sidewalk, and for this she was grateful, as the bags were cumbersome and unwieldy, despite her girlish enthusiasm. Between the two of them, they got the groceries safely packed away in the back seat, and Midori gave Himuro his now decidedly slimmer wallet back. If he noticed the change in its girth, he made no comment on it, simply silently put it back into his jacket and thanked her for doing the shopping.

After ascertaining that Midori had no further errands, Amanohashi pulled out into traffic again, and they all rode silently to their final destination.

When they reached the address that Himuro had given them, Midori could not help but be a little struck. It was a tall, beautiful building, with lots of steel and glass, and a uniformed doorman came right up to the car when Amanohashi pulled into the underground parking area. It was not as if Midori had never been in fine surroundings. Her own home was stately in itself, her sister had a well-deserved reputation as an ojou-sama, and she had been educated at several prestigious music schools in Europe, but she had not expected the building where her beloved mathematics instructor lived to be quite so tall, nor the doorman to be quite so liveried.

_I suppose I should have known, _she thought as she let her own self out of the back seat before either Amanohashi or the doorman could get to her. _He does drive a Maserati. He has to put it somewhere._

A quick explanation of the situation sufficed to enlist the doorman's aid in assisting Himuro to his door, and soon he was laden down with the newly purchased groceries like a camel, while Himuro leaned mutely on Midori's shoulder.

It was only after Himuro insisted that he required no further assistance that Amanohashi at last relinquished control of the situation, and gave the reins of responsibility to Midori, whom he wished luck. She gave him her best determined smile in response. After one last steady, backward glance, he turned his face forward, put his car into gear, and headed back in the direction of Habataki Gakuen, although by now the school day was over.

Feeling her responsibility, and her rapidly beating heart, Midori followed the doorman into the building, glad of the familiar warmth of Himuro's weight at her side. Although she was meant to be his crutch, his prop and support, it was Himuro who calmed her as they waited for the elevator, a brief touch of his hand on her shoulder gave her courage and resolve. He was silent during the elevator ride, and the doorman apparently expected this. He asked only one question, which Himuro answered briefly and promptly.

"I'll have Masuda bring it home."

Near the end of the ride, Himuro fished in pockets until he located his keys, which he gave over to Midori.

"The gold one," he said shortly, and she nodded.

The elevator chimed and they were let out into a tastefully decorated hall, with only two residential doors and a stairwell door opening onto it.

_Sensei has half this floor to himself_, she thought.

His door was on the left, and a short, glossy-leafed tree in a wide clay pot stood to one side of it.

_The staff of the building must take care of that, _she thought. _I can't imagine sensei thinking it was necessary._

Midori counted through the keys until she found the dull gold one, then unlocked the door with one hand, the other braced reassuringly against the small of Himuro's back. She went first through the door, leading him after, as if it were her home and not his. The doorman followed after them with the groceries in his arms. The apartment was dark, lit only by the light which filtered through the slats of the drawn blinds, but Midori was saved the indignity of groping around the room for a switch by Himuro, who touched the wall briefly on the left side of the door and brought them all into warm illumination.

And this was the way in which Yumeno Midori first came to know the rooms of Himuro Reiichi.

The apartment was both subtle and impressive, and gave the impression of a great deal of open space. There were beautiful dark wood floors and crown molding, and a great steel-framed window ran across the back wall and surely commanded a fine view of the city, considering the location of the building. Just exactly what the view was like, Midori would have to discover later, as the outside world was obscured by a set of wooden blinds which already had their slats turned to repel both the sun and the scenery. The front room was open and simple and decorated with Spartan taste. There was a black sofa on steel legs that was sleek and immaculate, and a matching chair stood nearby, facing a narrow glass coffee table. The rest of the room was given over to the thrillingly familiar length of a parlor grand piano, which stood before the blinded window. It was the only object without immediate and practical function in the room, and her heart was drawn to it immediately.

Otherwise the kitchen stood off to her left through an open arch, and a hall with a spartan desk flanked by bookshelves promised further mysteries to the right. All of this she captured in her heart in a moment as the lights flickered on, then she was leading Himuro over to the sofa, where she settled him. She thanked the doorman for his assistance, and then took the groceries from him and deposited them safely in the kitchen, quickly tucking the perishables away in the refrigerator but leaving the rest in a bag on the counter for later sorting.

"Goodnight, young miss," the doorman wished politely as she saw him out, "I hope you feel better soon, Himuro-sensei."

With the door locked and bolted, Midori turned to look at Himuro and found he had covered his eyes with his uninjured hand. His other hand lay across his lap in its brace. Midori found the light switch on the wall and was pleased to find it was a dial, suited to providing many levels of brightness. She turned it experimentally until the lights were as dim and wan as if the room were lit by candlelight. He did not move in reaction to this change, and he still had not yet spoken, so she busied herself in the kitchen, locating a glass and filling it with ice water. She brought it to him, balancing the sweating glass carefully between her fingers, and leaned forward, so she could keep her voice low and not aggravate his already strained nerves.

"Sensei, I've turned down the lights and I've brought you some ice water if you'd like to take something for your headache."

She had brought the bottle of acetaminophen from the shopping bag, and placing the ice water neatly down on a napkin in close reach, she sat down on he sofa next to him and began to struggle with the safety cap on the new bottle of medicine. When she finally succeeded in opening the bottle, pulling out the cotton wading, and gaining access to the small white pills inside, she looked over at him and found he had moved his hand so that it lay across his forehead, and that he was watching her through half-closed eyes.

They stared at one another silently for several seconds before he at last spoke.

"Yumeno," he said simply, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said, relieved that his mood appeared to have lightened at least a little since they had left the hospital.

"You don't have to be here," he said shortly as he leaned back and closed his eyes briefly before letting them fall again on her heavily, "But I'm glad you are," he admitted.

"I'm here because I want to be," she reassured him as she shook out two white pills into her palm.

"So you shouted for all the world to hear today," he answered dryly, and she flushed, her ears turning pink as the blood throbbed in them.

"I'm sorry if I embarrassed you," Midori apologized, her voice soft and shy, her head bent so that her hair fell into her face. "I just felt like I couldn't leave you alone."

"I don't want you to leave me alone," he said, and she could hear the period that closed that part of their conversation fall like a stone between them. He had said what he meant and didn't intend to say anything further. This deliberate simplicity was very like him, and it made her smile despite herself, as her burning ears cooled down.

She offered him the glass of ice water, and after he had taken a swallow she traded the pills for the glass and she was satisfied as he swallowed them down and then leaned back against the sofa again. She chewed on her lip thoughtfully as she considered something that was worrying her.

"Sensei, I know you told _that woman_," she coughed a little and cleared her throat, resolving to be kind and generous, even to her enemies, "I mean, Kobayashi-sensei, that you didn't want her to come over this evening, but she seemed pretty adamant about it. Aren't you worried that she'll come over when she finishes her ER shift anyway? I can try to turn her away at the door if you want - "

He raised his good hand briefly and dismissively to halt her troubled outpouring. "I am not worried about that," he said simply, and to forestall further distress he added, "Kobayashi-sensei will not be coming by because she does not know my address."

If Midori had been standing, this revelation would have caused her to take a seat. It was _not_ what she had expected, even in the depths of her heart, even with her full confidence behind Himuro.

"But," she began uncertainly, "But, sensei, what about all that paperwork you filled out at the hospital? Surely if she's determined to find you, all she has to do is request that information from the records department."

"I put my parents' address on the paperwork at the hospital, and that is an address that Kobayashi-sensei already has and knows will not avail her," he answered her shortly, and then closed his eyes. "Now, I'd rather not discuss Kobayashi-sensei further. Rest assured she won't be by this evening."

Midori flushed hard and studied her lap, silently berating herself for upsetting him.

"I'm sorry, sensei," she apologized earnestly, because she realized that she ought to have learned by now that the subject of Kobayashi Hidemi upset him, and the last thing he needed while recovering from an injury was to be harassed and upset about an uncomfortable subject. "Please don't worry about it," she assured him wholeheartedly. "I trust you."

He opened his eyes briefly, squinted at her, then closed them again.

"Thank you, Yumeno," he answered, and seemed relieved. Although the change was subtle, it was one she had learned to read on his face: relief when she had given an answer that pleased him. After a moment, he continued, apparently satisfied that the previous issue had been settled. "I'd appreciate it if you'd bring me my spare pair of glasses," he said, "I haven't really been able to see anything since the fall."

"Of course, sensei," Midori agreed immediately, more than ready to be on her toes to serve him as penitence for her earlier blunder. She settled the sweating glass back on the folded napkin and rose to cast her eyes about the room for this requested object. She did not immediately see them and was about to ask where they might be found, when he spoke without being prompted.

"I keep them in a drawer in the bedroom, at the end of that hall," he gestured briefly with his uninjured hand, "As you enter the room on the right there is a wall of built-in cabinetry. Count over three rows from the door and then look in the third drawer from the top. There will be several cases in this drawer. The black case has the pair with my current prescription. The light switch is also on your right as you enter the room."

"I'll be right back, then," she assured cheerfully, and tried her best to keep her mind focused on her mission, and not dwell on the fact that she was going to go into her beloved sensei's bedroom and rummage around in his drawers. No! She couldn't let her mind wander at all, no matter what the temptation. She was a nurse-angel on a mission of healing. She had to be sensible about these things and stay focused, because Himuro was depending on her. These are the things she told herself as she boldly marched down the hall toward the door at the end of the corridor.

"-meno," his voice was quiet behind her, and she stopped where she stood and turned to look over her shoulder at him. Himuro's face was turned toward her, and his eyes were open, but narrowed, as if he were trying in vain to bring her into focus.

"Do you need something, sensei?" she asked, poised to return to his side if he requested it, to fetch and carry whatever it was that he needed.

He was silent for a moment, as if thinking of what to say, and she hovered in the hall, before the bare desk and the two austere bookcases which were carefully packed with volumes and volumes of what looked like complicated mathematical and scientific texts. At last he shook his head.

"No," he said, "Nothing. I'm sorry. Please go on."

This said, he closed his eyes again and let his head rest against the back of the sofa. She lingered for a moment, captured by the gravity of localized worry, but then pulled away, drawn on by her desire to do as he asked of her, as well as to see what mysteries of his personality his bedroom might reveal to her.

Beyond the plain dark wood door that yielded easily to her fingertips was another dim room with drawn blinds over a wide window. A momentary flutter of her hands along the wall brought the switch under her fingers - another dial, like the one in the front room. As Himuro was well-shielded from the light behind a door and down a hall, she turned the light up and found the walls were painted a crisp bluish-white, and that the floors were the same polished dark wood as the front room. There was a double bed whose foot stood a few paces in front of her, but most of the rest of the room was given over to built in cabinetry and shelving, where the bits and pieces of Himuro's life were obviously carefully filed. Everything in the room was very neatly put away. The bed was made with hospital precision, and two pillows stood plump and ready at the head of the bed. The sheets were white and the coverlet was grey. Like the rest of the house that she had seen thus far, this room was obviously Himuro's.

_This is how he is_, she thought fondly. _I love all of this. I love all of him._

It was easy to say it to herself, even here in his bedroom, because she accepted it with the fullness of her heart.

Then she remembered the purpose of her errand and left off staring at his choice of furniture and counted over three rows of drawers and shelving to find the place where he kept his glasses. She counted down and then experimentally pulled the drawer out. It was a small, narrow drawer, one of many, obviously much beloved by a man who loved to organize and compartmentalize things. It was fairly high and she was not so very tall, so she was forced to strain up on her bare tip toes to peep into it. Inside, there were a number of cases, as he had indicated, and all were dark colored. It was only with a little rummaging that she came up with the one that she felt sure was 'black' as opposed to 'very dark grey,' 'gunmetal,' or 'ebony.'

Glasses in hand, she came to rest on her flat feet as she pushed the drawer closed. She was moving to turn the lights down again when she noticed a small collection of apparently unfiled goods on an end table by the door. Curious, she tried to make sense of what was gathered there. There was a small box with a silk ribbon laid over it, a handkerchief, a half empty plastic bottle of water, a small key chain charm - _oh_. She recognized the handkerchief. It was a dainty pink one with a friendly print that only she and preschoolers would find appealing. The key chain charm had little bells that tinkled on it. She had worked hard the previous February to make the individual chocolates she had packed into the little box. There was the New Year's card she had labored over with her Grandpapa's assistance.

_He keeps them,_she thought, and without realizing it her empty hand had gone to the pocket where she had stowed his broken glasses. The bent frames and cracked lenses were somehow very comforting to her touch.

_Little by little, we build up the litter of who we are_, she thought as she looked at his small collection of treasures. Perhaps they had not yet been filed away because he did not yet know where to put them. Perhaps they had not yet been filed away because they gave a small spark of warmth in her absence. Perhaps they had not yet been filed away because he was both obsessive and compulsive in all things, but particularly when it came to her.

_He doesn't have to say anything,_ she thought as her hand moved up to tug at the beaded scrunchy that held her short hair back in its ponytail. _I understand his feelings. _

She left the elastic strung beads hung on the half-empty water bottle, her small offering to his personal shrine, and then turned the lights down and closed the door behind her.

* * *

><p>Back in the living room, she found Himuro apparently asleep, as he had not obviously moved since she had gone into the other room. Seeing him there, harried and exhausted and dozing in his shirt and tie, she felt a great desire to comfort him. She laid the glasses down on the table near the glass of water, and then cast around for some aid, but nothing in the front room seemed to lend itself to gentle comfort, so she went down the hall again to the bedroom and made off with one of the pillows from the bed. This she brought back to the sofa and plumped a little between her palms as she thought of how best to introduce him to it without waking him up.<p>

Then he stirred a little and found her watching him expectantly, a pillow from his bed in her arms.

"Yumeno," he began patiently, but tiredly, "I asked for my glasses, not a pillow."

"I've brought both," she assured kindly, "Now sit up a little and we can put the pillow wherever it will make you most comfortable."

She leaned in over him, and he submitted placidly to her fiddling about with pillow and his shoulders until she was satisfied that he was more comfortable. Then she carefully moved his splinted arm until it rested on the arm of the sofa, elevated. Midori was not used to handling Himuro so much, and she might have been more nervous had she not wanted so much to be kind to him and to ease his discomfort. It still made her heart beat faster to be so close to him, and to touch him so casually as she smoothed the pillow or tried to situate his injured wrist properly. His skin was warm and dry and the presence of his body was becoming very familiar to her. The circumstances of the day had found her wrapped in his arms in the disastrous aftermath of their fall, she bearing up under his weight as they walked together, her own arms around him as she tried to tend to him when he had vomited so lavishly. What had been only thrilling before was becoming natural, and she found herself both relaxed and giddy as she seated herself on the sofa next to him and opened the black case to reveal a pair of familiar glasses.

_He's let me be the one who stands beside him. I have to do my best for him,_ she thought as she unfolded the arms of the glasses and then held them out to him.

Himuro took them without a word and after a moment of logistical difficulty got them seated properly on his nose and turned his eyes toward her. He smiled ever-so-briefly and she was relieved to see her sensei there, familiar behind the lenses of his glasses.

"It's good to see you again," he remarked.

She smiled back at him. Now that he was wearing his glasses again he seemed much less vulnerable than he had been, but Midori knew from Yamada's warnings that he was still depending on her, so she nodded once to herself and then promptly crawled down to the floor where she began to unlace his shoes. Since they had come inside in such a tizzy, with the doorman and the groceries, he was still wearing his smart black oxfords - street shoes and not house shoes.

"I can do that myself," he protested, and made to move.

"I know you can," she assured pleasantly, "But it makes me happy to do this for you, so please let me." Midori was accustomed to assisting her Grandpapa in dozens of ways every day, and she knew how important it was to respect his pride and dignity as she provided her gentle helps. Fetching shoes and pillows and medicine was familiar and comforting to her, and although she was worried about her qualifications as a practical nurse, she enjoyed taking care of others and so devoted herself to it.

"All right," he said at last, put at ease by her relaxed attitude, and she kept at it, until she had removed his oxfords and placed them by the door and settled his feet in a pair of house slippers.

When she came back to sit next to him on the sofa she laughed a little at him, and he raised a speculative eyebrow.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Only you," she answered promptly. "I just realized it. You've got a concussion and a sprained wrist, you're sitting on your own sofa in your own house almost in the dark, and you still haven't loosened your necktie."

His uninjured hand went up to touch the knot at his throat absently.

"I don't like to look unprofessional in front of other people," he explained shortly, a vague attempt at not sounding ridiculous that just ended up sounding ridiculous.

"I think it's all right, just this once, Reiichi," Midori laughed, low and private and feeling very close to him in his all his silly crossness. She had already leaned toward him companionably, and brushed his hand away from his tie with her two able ones. "Besides," she added amiably, "I'm not really other people."

"-san," he said as he let himself tended, and laid back against the sofa in cantankerous but satisfied discomfort, just enjoying the feeling of her hands as she moved.

"Of course, sensei," she agreed complacently as she left the undone tie hanging around his neck and moved to loosen the top button of his shirt, "Reiichi-san."

Her ministrations finished, she retreated to her place on the sofa next to him. He rolled his neck to look at her.

"You have a lot of practice with neckties," he said. It was something between a question and a statement.

"A necessary skill," she offered with a laugh in her voice. "In Italy I wore a half-Windsor with my uniform. It had a beret and a cardigan. I think you would have liked it," she said confidently. "I think a cute uniform is really important for a girl in school. It helps them really focus on studying hard."

Unexpectedly, he chuckled quietly.

"From you, I almost believe that. I am certain that _you _believe that."

"Well, of course," Midori answered him simply, "I wouldn't have said it if I didn't."

"I'm glad it's you," he said, as they sat alone together in the dim warmth.

She thought '_Reiichi'_, but instead she said, "_Himurochi_," teasingly, because she was uncertain about his mood and how he meant to continue.

"I don't want anyone else. Not today," he said flatly, and she could tell that he meant it. He sounded very tired. "You're the only one I can stand."

_I'll make it up to you,_ he thought. _I don't deserve you,_ he thought. _I'm a terrible man,_ he thought. _ Just let me be selfish for a while and pretend that this isn't all completely impossible._

She remembered how needy he had sounded when he had first begun to speak after he had hit his head. _He's lonely,_ she thought. _He's afraid of being alone._

She put her hand reassuringly over his and said, "Don't worry, sensei. I won't leave you."

He realized as she said it that he had hoped she would call him by his given name again, so he could chide her for it, and because he liked hearing it, the way she turned it around and gave it back to him, like it was a gift. There were perhaps half a dozen living individuals who called him by his given name, including his parents. Before Midori had opened her mouth on that starry night and named him against his will, he had found personal names to be a tedious complication of what ought to be otherwise straightforward communication. Now he listened for it with no premeditation, only simple pleasure. When she called him by his own name, even to tease him, she built the walls of the room where they dwelt together, apart from the world. It was a secret language. It was private communication.

As he had been thinking this over, she had moved to pick his hand up, curling one pinky around his. He came to himself in this position and found she was already talking.

" - it won't be easy even if everything goes really well, and the last thing I need is you fighting me over something silly. I promise I'll be on my very best behavior as a student nurse, and won't try to play any tricks or do anything that makes you uncomfortable just to get my way. But you have to promise that you'll also try and be sensible and not refuse to do something that's for your own health. I going to try very hard, Reiichi, so please, promise me that you'll try very hard to be good and mind me and not make a fuss?"

Midori was so earnest, leaning forward with wide, gentle eyes, her pinky looped so solemnly around his, that he agreed to her promise promptly, and probably would have regardless of its content. He had mostly hung on the way she said his name, full of feeling and determination.

"Reiichi-san," he reminded her like familiar clockwork, but at this moment he wasn't particularly perturbed that she never seemed to pay his corrections any mind.

* * *

><p>After she had settled Himuro snugly on the sofa with his pillow and his glass of cool water and an ice pack on his wrist, Midori excused herself to the kitchen, so that she could properly put away the groceries she had left sitting so forlornly on the counter.<p>

The kitchen was neat, excessively clean, compact and efficient. It was long and narrow, and ran the width of her sensei's apartment. Sensibly, it was laid out in Pullman style, with counters and appliances along both the long walls. There was enough counter space to create quite a culinary extravaganza, and this was partly because there was _absolutely nothing_ on any of the counters. There was no butcher's block of kitchen knives. There was no caddy of cooking spoons, forks, and chopsticks. There was no rack of spices. There weren't even any appliances. There was no toaster, no blender, no mixer - there was no _rice cooker_. In fact, the only small appliance that Midori could find was a coffee maker, which was mounted under one of the upper cabinets, as if conservation of counter-space were an issue.

When she had whirled into the kitchen earlier, she had not had time to take away any lasting impression of it, other than the fact that it was quite clean. Now this first fleeting impression was reaffirmed. The kitchen smelled much more of antiseptic than it did of food. She wasn't sure what Himuro prepared in this room - perhaps chemistry experiments - but it did not seem as if he prepared much food in it. If he did, he covered his tracks like a criminal mastermind. She even wondered, had she the proper training to find it, if there would be any _forensic_ evidence of cooking.

Well, perhaps there were secrets hidden in the cabinets. There were an awful lot of cabinets. It was a large kitchen for an apartment, nearly as large as the kitchen in the house she shared with her parents, siblings, and grandfather. Surely the luxury of such space was put to good use. She knelt and began examining the contents of the lower cabinets, both to satisfy her own curiosity and also as a practical measure to determine where best to put away the pantry staples that she had bought.

What she found was yawning, cavernous space.

In cabinet after cabinet, she found only one or two objects, and sometimes none at all. In the cabinet Midori had to assume was designated for pots and pans, she found a chrome teapot and one small saucepan. In another cabinet, Midori found a box of baking soda, three bottles of the same cleaning solution, and a sponge. The upper cabinets were not much better. In one Midori found three small plates of varying sizes, and one bowl. There were two glasses and a coffee mug stowed above them. They were all grey or pale cream color and without pattern or ornament.

At last, having exhausted every location in the kitchen save the fridge, she came across what she knew must be his store of food. It was the single densest concentration of foodstuffs she had yet encountered in the kitchen, but as such, it left much to be desired. There was a small loaf of rye bread wrapped in plastic, a liter of milk, a cellophane bag of celery, a small block of a pale white substance which seemed to be cheese, but might have been tofu, and another box of baking soda. There was very little else.

Midori closed up the fridge and then sat down on her bottom in front of it to think about the situation.

When she had first ferreted out the details of his diet, Midori had been inclined to believe that his recitation was hyperbola. It wasn't as if she doubted the idea that he might regulate his diet so precisely. This was very much in his character, and she had every reason to believe he was quite obsessive enough to do it. What she doubted was his assertion that he never deviated from this diet by his own choice. Surely, even if he carefully regulated his diet, he ate things other than celery, milk, bread, and cheese. Sometimes he surely ate carrots instead of celery. Sometimes he surely ate some beans. Every once in a while, he must certainly eat some rice.

But she found no evidence to indicate that he ate _anything else_, except when she fed him herself and witnessed him eating and digesting it.

_No matter how many vitamins and minerals he takes, this can't be a balanced diet,_ she worried. _There isn't enough protein. It's amazing that he hasn't died of malnutrition._

Even if he elected not to eat meat, which was fine, she thought, he certainly needed to eat a lot of beans and nuts to make up for it, and a lot of different kinds of vegetables, not simply celery. Besides the looming danger of malnutrition due to a lack of essential nutrients, Midori worried that Himuro might not be eating properly simply because he was taking no pleasure in his food. It needn't be decadent, but it ought to at least be healthful, well-prepared, and appetizing. Right now she wouldn't really qualify what he was doing as eating. It was more like processing raw materials.

She thought back to what she had said to him when he had told her about the foods he ate.

_Sensei,_ she had said, laughing, _That's not a meal. Those are ingredients._

Well, now that she had taken stock of the situation with her own eyes, she knew very well what she had to do. She simply had to begin making some sort of dinner for him at least once a week. She would have liked to do it more often, but she was uncertain whether he would accept her presence in his kitchen more frequently than that, once his injuries healed. It was best to start slowly, and as he became accustomed to having a decent variety of decent meals, try to expand her base of influence.

He simply could not go on just eating celery, rye bread, milk, and cheese.

She got to her feet with the fires of domestic willpower rekindled in her breast, and set about to do what she needed to do. She needed both a long term plan, which she was beginning to establish as a framework in her mind, and a short term plan, which required immediate action, because they both needed to be fed this very evening. Fortunately she had had the foresight to anticipate that her sensei's larder would be wanting, so she had already bought all the ingredients she would need for a few nights' simple cooking. It would be a challenge to prepare dinner with only one sauce pan, one knife, and a teapot though. She would need to call in reinforcements.

Midori put the dry pantry staples away in the cabinet, next to the lone can of coffee, and then prepared to make an important telephone call.

* * *

><p>After she had made her phone call - her phone had eked out enough power from its exhausted battery before it had at last died - Midori returned to Himuro's side, changed his ice pack, brought him a fresh glass of water and then sat beside him on the sofa, wondering what she might do to help him pass the time. He was silently staring into a corner of the room, apparently deep in thought, but when she sat down next to him, he turned his head briefly to look at her.<p>

"You must find everything here to be very plain and boring," he said shortly, and Midori was at a loss as to how to respond. It was true, she had been thinking that his life, at least as far as the food went, was _very_ plain and _unappetizingly _boring. This made her feel rather like Brutus with a bloody dagger in her hand. She ducked her head in embarrassment and was silent.

After a few moments, he turned to look into the middle distance again and said, "As I thought. I'm sure that you imagined I had some mysterious and complex character that you would discover if you followed me home. I am sorry," he did not sound particularly sorry, but a bit hard, brusque, "But that is not the case. I have no hidden secrets. I am just as plain and unexciting at my core as I appear on the surface. I am sorry if this is disappointing to you."

"It's not disappointing!" Midori responded emphatically without thinking, then began backpedaling uncertainly, trying to find some way to say what she meant, "I mean, I'm not disappointed because what you're saying isn't true. I don't think you're boring. I think you have your own way of doing things, and maybe I don't think that everything you like and everything you do are the very best things, it's maybe not what I would choose myself, but that doesn't mean I don't value and respect what you've chosen. All of those things are important to me because they're the parts that make Himuro-sensei Himuro-sensei. I don't need you to be different than you are. I just want you to be happy as yourself."

He looked back at her in spite of himself and found that she was making a difficult face, biting her lip and perhaps struggling not to cry. He felt a little guilty for having made her feel this way when she was already working so hard on his behalf.

_I just want to hear her say it. _ He thought to himself darkly. _ I am cruel and selfish._

She was still struggling to work it out to him in words. "I know we aren't the same. If we were, I don't think I would be very good at making you happy. I don't think I would be able to share anything with you that you didn't already have. I'm glad that you're who you are. When I find out something new about you, of course it surprises me, and it also makes me warm in my heart," she rested one of her palms on her chest. "You _do_ have a mysterious and complex character, but it isn't because you're secretly a gangster or an assassin or a high-stakes gambler, or because you're an art thief in your spare time, or a gourmet cook, or a modern day samurai. It's because you're a human being. I want to find out about all the parts of yourself that you don't show to anyone else, not because I'm waiting to find out that you're different than I thought you were. I want to find out about them because I want to know about you."

Himuro was forced out of his brooding by her unintentionally hilarious string of descriptions of his secret double life, and his face softened a little. She was always very surprising in her _intense consistency_. She wanted him, and she was apparently willing to tell him as many times as he wanted to hear it (even when he was not prepared to hear it).

"Besides," she was saying, "I do know for a fact that you're secretly a street racer - "

"I am _not _a street racer," he sputtered, caught entirely off guard, "I take every precaution when I drive, and I drive safely, and according to the law."

"Except for the speed limit," she protested, "Besides, I don't think there are any laws against drifting - "

"Yumeno," he said deliberately, "I am certain that you have absolutely no idea what drifting is."

"It's when you go around a curve really fast without putting on the brakes," she declared triumphantly, as if she had proved to him how wrong he was in doubting her knowledge of racing.

"Yumeno, if I simply 'went around a curve really fast without putting on the brakes,' I wouldn't drift. I would end up flying off of a cliff, or flatting myself against a rock embankment," he sighed. "Where is it you pick up these ideas?" he asked rhetorically, although he had a suspicion that the answer was 'television.' (It was actually manga). "Drifting is all about physics and mathematics. To drift properly, as one goes into a turn, the rear sideslip angle, that is the measure of the difference between a wheel's actual direction of travel and the direction in which it is pointing must be greater than the front sideslip angle, the same measure of the difference in the front wheels. You must hug the inside corner of a turn to allow enough area to drift through it, and doing so preserves speed through a curve, eliminating the energy waste of deceleration to take the curve and acceleration after the curve. If one drifts successfully, a high exit speed is maintained through the curve. Now, to find a sideslip angle, we must rely on calculus." He paused to wave his good hand, "Go get a piece of paper and a pen for me from the desk, and I'll diagram it out so that you can understand."

"Yes, sensei," Midori chorused obediently, relieved that he appeared to be again in his element, his earlier brooding subsumed by his passion for automobiles and for numbers. She went to fetch the required pen and paper, and prepared herself for a long lecture about wheel angles and tire traction.

* * *

><p>The lecture lasted quite a while and left half a dozen sheets figured over with various diagrams and Himuro's cramped but clear handwriting. At the end of it, she had a substantially better understanding of drifting than she had had before he had gone out of his way to explain it to her, but she imagined, if she attempted to explain it to her sister, it would probably still come out "it's when you go around a curve really fast without putting on the brakes."<p>

She carefully put his handwritten notes away on the desk for safe-keeping, resolving to take them with her to her grave, and when she had finished this painstaking archival, she returned to Himuro to find that multiple glasses of ice water had finally taken a toll on his bladder, and that he required the toilet.

She was relieved that he informed her of this and did not seem stubbornly set on taking himself to the bathroom. She helped him to his feet and then put her arm supportively around his back and escorted him down the hall. He was relatively steady on his feet, but she could tell from his slow and sometimes uncertain movement that he was still experiencing some dizziness, and was glad that she was there for him to lean on when he needed it.

At the door, she paused, biting her lip, and thought of the most polite way to say what she was thinking. At last she just blurted it out.

"You know not to try to go standing up, right?" she asked, worried. "You're much more likely to fall if you get dizzy."

At this he laughed, briefly, again caught off guard by the things that she was worrying about.

"I know," Himuro assured her. "I don't want another concussion either."

So placated, Midori allowed him to go into the toilet by himself and to close the door behind him, but only after he promised to let her know when he was finished so that she could help him back to the sofa.

She was trying to decide whether or not to hover near the door, and perhaps embarrass her sensei by listening to him go to the toilet, just in case he needed some sort of help while he was in there, when the decision was made for her as the intercom buzzer sounded.

Midori took one last look at the bathroom door, then scuttled down the hallway toward the living room to answer it. When she asked who was calling she was greeted with a familiar voice and a short explanation.

"It's me," said her sister, and so Midori buzzed her in.

When she opened the door to a polite knock, she found not only her sister but also Hazuki Kei standing on the other side of it. Satomi was carrying Midori's schoolbag and violin, as well as a small duffle packed with necessities for her sister's private nursing venture. Kei was carrying a box that contained a beloved object that she figured was essential for her continued happiness at Himuro Reiichi's residence.

"Grandmama's rice cooker," she greeted the boxed appliance blissfully.

"Please excuse our intrusion," her sister said seriously in reply, and Kei chorused it after her, his own tone calm and even.

"Oh, oh," Midori fluttered her hands and stepped backward to allow them inside, bowing rapidly in apology, "Excuse my rudeness. Come in, please."

Realizing that the room was probably uncomfortably dark for those without concussions, Midori turned the lights up, resolving to turn them down again when Himuro emerged from the toilet. She blinked in the unexpected brightness. It seemed strangely stark and chilly after the warm darkness.

Kei and Satomi crossed the threshold into the apartment with decorum, and Midori found her sister examining the interior with a critical eye as she relieved Kei of his precious burden.

"But when she went there, the cupboard was bare," quoth Satomi gravely, and Midori had to laugh a little in empathy with her sister's observation.

"That was my first reaction too," Midori assured her, and then smiled, turning an affectionate eye to the interior, "But it has its own charm. It's austere, but it does have character. This is definitely sensei's home," she explained at last, and her sister nodded in agreement.

"How is Himuro-sensei?" asked Kei, his voice low in case the master of the house might be off in the other room, sleeping off his head injury.

"He's all right," Midori assured them as she arranged her schoolbag and duffle in one corner of the front room. "Honestly, we're both really lucky he wasn't hurt more badly, considering the spill we took, at least that's what the doctor said. He just needs some rest and some taking care of, and I'm going to do my very best to see that he gets both. He seems to have relaxed since we got home, which is what he needs. He's been pretty stressed all day," she blinked and then leaned to one side thoughtfully. "It's a little hard to imagine that I was practicing Mendelhossen on the roof _today_, that I slipped and we fell _today_. It seems like it was an impossibly long time ago."

Satomi gave her a quiet, mysterious smile and then commented, "It seems like an impossibly long time ago to me too. It must have been, for Midori-onee-chan to have grown up so much. I expected to find you crying or mooning over something silly, and instead you are very clear-headed. I'm proud of you."

Her sister's praise caused Midori to wrap her arms briefly around herself in a quick hug. "I've decided to do my best," she explained, "There isn't anyone for sensei to depend on, other than me. It's true that there are a lot of things for me to worry about," she admitted, sounding a little uncertain, "But I've got to work hard to become someone dependable, who isn't just a burden. I want to be like," she closed her eyes in concentration as she thought about it, then threw her arms up, "Like a big tree in a garden, one that makes cool shade to sit in, and weathers through storms, and makes flowers in the spring, and fruits in the fall. I want someone to be able to take comfort, and then look up and say 'I'm glad she's here.'"

"Oh," Satomi hummed thoughtfully, "_Someone?_" Midori flushed in response to her sister's leading tone, but she didn't expect for Satomi to continue, turning to Kei as she raised one finger and announced, "Regard, Kei-chan. These are the lessons that love teaches us."

At such a direct statement from her sister in Himuro's living room and in front of Hazuki Kei, Midori's ears turned rosy pink and she ducked her head down in mute embarrassment, fluttering both her hands as if this might help her cool off her burning face. Kei spoke then, an obvious attempt to draw the conversation away from this point of palpitating distress.

"Where is Himuro-sensei now? Sleeping?" he asked evenly, kindly paying no mind to Midori's rosy cheeks and pounding heart.

"I was in the bathroom," Himuro answered shortly, and Midori turned wide eyes to find him standing calmly in the hall, one hand braced against the wall. How much of the conversation he had overheard, Midori could not say, but the wild embarrassment was chased out of her heart by concern as she immediately moved across the room to him.

"Sensei, you promised that you'd call for me when you finished so that I could help you back to the sofa," she berated him, but her voice was as warm and gentle as she could make it, as she was sure he would not be delighted at the prospect of his visitors. She thought back to what he had said to her earlier, when they had sat together in this same dark room.

_'I don't want anyone else. Not today. You're the only one I can stand.'_

"What would I do if you slipped and fell again?" she chided him gently, "I'd have to call an ambulance and then we'd go right back to the hospital and Yamada-sensei would probably never stop yelling at me."

Himuro admitted to no wrongdoing, yet he let himself be led back to the sofa and made comfortable again. Satomi and Kei silently exchanged looks as Midori made sure his pillow suited him, and that he didn't require any fresh ice water. With Himuro safely seated, Midori turned down the lights again so they were awash in the warm darkness. The setting sun painted the room a beautiful orange as it came through in bars laid by the slats of the blinds, and Midori found herself staring silently at her sister and Kei, while Himuro sat moodily behind her, his eyes closed.

Both Satomi and Kei were by nature reticent people, Kei as still as water, her sister as grave as a little owl, and so it was very quiet for some seconds, as Midori thought of what she ought to say or do. She hadn't expected Satomi to bring Kei along, but then she had asked for the rice cooker, and it was all a bit much for one girl to carry. She hadn't meant to disturb Himuro's rest with unexpected company, but she had needed some things for the evening -

It was Himuro who broke the silence unexpectedly, saying laconically, "Thank you very much for your kind visit." He did not bother to open his eyes as he spoke.

Midori smiled at the two figures by the door a little painfully then turned to look at Himuro, although he had not opened his eyes. "Kei-kun and Satomi-chan were nice enough to bring over the things I needed for this evening."

"I am much obliged for their effort," he answered shortly, and then opened his eyes a sliver, some small attempt at hospitality. "Thank you honestly, Yumeno, Hazuki. I appreciate what you have done for me today. I"m sorry, I'm just not in the mood to receive guests this evening."

"Of course not, sensei," Satomi answered, small and wise and perfect as she bowed gracefully. "Nor would we expect you to. We just came to wish you a good evening and the best wishes for your recovery."

"Get well soon, Himuro-sensei," Kei added earnestly, and following Satomi's example bowed his head briefly.

"You are good students," Himuro observed, and he sounded tired.

Satomi smiled briefly at this and then nodded at Kei as she turned. "Then we will take our leave," she said. "Good evening, onee-chan, Himuro-sensei."

"Good evening, Kei-kun, Satomi-chan," Midori responded, relieved and happy that Satomi had understood everything so easily, even without being told. She always knew just what to do.

Kei added his own goodnight to the softly spoken farewells, and then moved with Satomi through the door that Midori opened for them. Across the threshold, he paused for a moment, one hand calmly on Satomi's shoulder, and spoke lowly to her sister, who stood in the frame of the door's picture, seeing them off.

"I think I would be happy," he said, in his measured way, "To have you in my corner. Midori is Midori. She has her own special powers. You'll make a good tree. Keep doing your best."

And with those strange, strangely comforting words of praise, he and Satomi went down the hall together, his arm around her shoulders.

Midori closed and locked the door, and then turned to look at Himuro, who was still silently leaning back on the sofa.

Although their company had been dispatched, he had not yet opened his eyes again, as if he were ruminating silently on the situation. As Midori observed him, she could not help but laugh a little.

"You certainly are a bear this evening, sensei. But that's all right," she confided, "Because you could be the crossest bear in the world, and I wouldn't mind. Besides, everyone's allowed to be difficult when they aren't feeling well." She made a small amused sound in the back of her throat, "And look, you even did your collar and tie up again while you were in the bathroom."

She crossed the room to loosen his tie and unbutton his top button again, and as she leaned in to do her work, he answered her mechanically.

"I don't like to look unprofessional - "

" - in front of other people," Midori finished with him, and he opened one eye to observe her as she untied his tie for a second time. "Well, the other people have gone now, sensei, so you may as well be comfortable."

He said nothing in response, but _he knew_.

He was being, as she had laughingly put it, a bear. He was being sullen and purposefully difficult. He wanted all of her attention, and he was jealous of her time. It was not something he would have presumed at school, and was fortunately not something he had yet to deal with on one of their extracurricular study sessions, but here, in his home, with the convenient excuse of his injury to justify his selfishness, he was quite willing to be a tyrant. He wanted to be the only person she thought about, the only thing she worried about. Although he had no real claim on her at all, he wanted her to act as if he did, as if the boundaries of this small world, which contained only the two of them, were enough for her.

In other times and in other circumstances, he loathed the possessive, selfish feelings that were always piling up in the back of his heart. To the part of his heart that was responsible and cautious these feelings were inappropriate as well as shameful and unseemly. His primary responsibility toward her was to act as her mentor, and to guide her along toward her path to the future, to help support her and push her, so she could fly to the far reaches where he knew she belonged. But despite his heartfelt commitment to helping her reach her full potential, the more he had come to know her, to understand her, and to love her, the more he wanted to lock her away in a room to which only he held the key. It was a terrible desire, despicable and disgusting, and in the folds of his neocortex, he knew it. But in his secret heart, the one she had called wild and impetuous -

He wanted to give her to the world, because that was what she deserved, and that was what the world deserved - to enjoy the natural richness of her music - but he also wanted to keep her completely to himself, because _he loved her_. Without meaning to, without intending to, he had already begun to reshape the fabric of his life around her.

But it was impossible. He knew it was all impossible. Even if she loved him with all her childish, girlish, silly, _abominably _consistent heart - and she was always insisting she did - her future was the world stage, playing music to stir the hearts of millions, and he was committed to his own dream: to be a teacher at Habataki Gakuen, helping class after class of bright-eyed, talented, and sometimes _ungrateful_ youths find their own paths to the complex, tangled future.

He knew that he could not look forward to a future where she waited for him at the door to take his bag and loosen his tie and to laugh at his serious expression, because even if she were willing, he would never let it happen, never let her cast aside her future to satisfy his own selfish wants. And was that what he even wanted? As appealing as this vague and imaginary portrait of domestic bliss was, he knew that with it, his life would never be the same again, and he feared such paradigm-shifting change.

Even knowing all of this, facing cold reality squarely and clinically, this evening he had given in to his weakness, and all he wanted was to pretend that an air-castle future might be possible, if only for a few hours, to give himself some comfort when he was feeling particularly savaged.

"Sensei," Midori broke into his monologue of pitiful self-loathing with patient insistence, "Would you like me to play something for you?" She had already moved to the seat of his piano, and was rolling back the ebony key-cover. From someone else, a suggestion of music to soothe an aggravated patient with a head injury might have been both unwise and unkind, but Midori could not imagine music as being something unwanted.

Himuro found he could not refuse her music no matter his mood. It was the language of her soul, and he always found pleasure in hearing her speak.

"Please," he said.

There was a shelf with a number of composition books against the wall at her left hand, and Midori found dozens of familiar classical scores: Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Schubert, Debussy, Tchaikovsky, her girlhood love Rachmaninoff, Bertini, Czerny - and then, carefully delineated were piles of scores by Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and others. She ran her finger along their spines and read out the names to herself: Bix Beiderbeck, Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Walker, Billie Holiday, John Lewis, Mary Lou Williams.

She thought back to when he had first told her, _My mother plays classical music. My father plays jazz._

He might have wished for the whole world to believe that he only played classical music, as fit with his serious, controlled self-image, but she knew what her heart told her.

_Classical piano and jazz piano, he loves them both. They both tell the story of his heart. He couldn't have one without the other._

She pulled a score book off the shelf and leafed through it until she found something that stirred her own heart, then secured it in the music stand and began to play.

Across the room from her, reclining on his sofa as comfortably as could be managed, given the circumstances, the corner of Himuro Reiichi's mouth turned up very briefly as a melody familiar to his heart was born suddenly from the trembling innards of the piano. Midori's lower lip was tucked against teeth as she concentrated on playing the difficult song and she soon forgot about everything else in the entire world as she lost herself in the music, her hands moving instinctively and rhythmically, her eyes unfocused, her mind lost in the trance of the sound, as if she were caught and held in the spell she was casting.

It was Liszt's Liebestraum no. 2 that she coaxed into the room with them, and soon she was thundering along as the notes rose with a fury. He could feel his own steady heart rate rise a little as he listened. Her performance was not perfect: when her emotions were up the sound was always intoxicating, but also undisciplined, which meant the notes were sometimes improvised when she likely did not intend them to be. She made no terrible blunders, but her sound wandered, a bit confused. She played the song three times in succession, and with each repetition her handling became more focused, as if she were struggling to understand something and slowly coming into knowledge as she wrestled with it. After she had let the fourth repetition come to rest softly in the air around them, she stretched her bony wrists over her head and hummed a few bars of a more famous Liszt composition.

He did not immediately comment, so she let her mind wander aloud as she looked up at the plain white ceiling.

"Liebestraum is the first thing I ever heard you play," she reminisced, a small smile curling up on her mouth because the memory was pleasing to her. "I was hoping to sneak into the music room to play a little - and then I heard your music. The sound was very warm. It was gentle and sensitive, and I wondered that I wasn't really in a dream, when I saw it was sensei playing. That's when I first began to understand things. But you were playing no. 3, not no. 2."

"No. 3 is more appropriate to play in a school music room than no. 2 is," Himuro responded dryly, then reflected for a moment. "Sometimes your sound is beautiful," he remarked, "But more often it is _deranged_. I suppose your greatest talent lies in the unfathomable truth that it is often most beautiful when it is _most deranged_." He sighed, as if greatly put upon, and then shook his head very briefly. "Greater control will come with time. Your raw emotion is both powerful and admirable, and your skill is considerable, due to your diligent practicing, but your control leaves a great deal to be desired. It is all well and good to move your audience with your own feelings, but please remember, you must be the one to play the song. Too often I find that it is the song that is playing you."

"If I let the song play me at first, I can understand what it wants, how it's trying to say how it feels. I know it isn't very professional, but that's how I get the sense of things. I still have a lot to learn," she smiled ruefully, and then bowed her head with sheepish humility. "I'm grateful that you're so patient in teaching me, even though I'm not an ideal student."

"You have your own strengths," Himuro said vaguely, despite himself. As he said it, Midori could not help but think of the words Hazuki Kei had given her earlier: 'Midori is Midori. She has her own special powers.'

Himuro studied her silhouette, dark against the wan twilight stripes of the heavy wooden blinds. Her chin was up as she studied the ceiling, and her neck was slender and pale. She was a strange, mysterious animal, and he could not help but watch her as she sat there on his paino bench. "You're not the protégée I would have imagined for myself," he admitted, "But as long as you keep getting top marks in my class I won't complain."

"You give me so much extra homework that it's no wonder that I have good marks. I bet I have three times as many grades as everybody else. _Three times,_ Himurochi. I just bet," she said, mildly rebellious. "It's a wonder that I ever have time to sleep and eat, let alone practice the violin."

"You have enough time to watch television." He refused to be baited.

Midori turned around, genuinely startled. "I do not watch television," she protested. "I don't have time to do something like that."

"Oh really?" he asked dryly, leaning his head back against the pillow and closing his eyes. "Then what is it exactly that you're always discussing with Fujii-san while you eat your lunch? It doesn't sound like Shakespeare."

She let out at relieved laugh. "Oh, sensei, you mean 'The Deep, Still Night.' That's only one night a week for an hour. That doesn't count _at all. _Are you jealous I talk about it with Nacchin? I'd talk about it with you only you told me you don't have a television, and I can see now that that's true. Maybe you should get one. Not to watch all the time. Just to watch every once in a while. Even if you're not interested in watching 'The Deep, Still Night,' you could always watch your Chainsaw Psychopath movies on it."

"It's not the same," he answered shortly, and sounded mildly petulant. "The answer is 'no.' I won't have a television in my house. I have better things to do with my time."

"Of course, of course," she said placatingly, raising both hands in front of her, palms outward. "It was only a suggestion, and your verdict has been duly noted." Midori stood as she spoke and moved toward the kitchen. "I'm just going to get the dinner ready to go. I'll only be a few minutes. Please be good and sit still where you are. You can always call out for me if you need anything, and I promise I'll come straight off. Can I get anything for you before I get started?"

"No," he said simply, and she gave him a warm, sweet smile in return, and then retired into the kitchen to prepare their dinner.

She was gone for some time.

She reappeared only after there was some musical piping from the kitchen, dusting her hands as she took off her pale yellow apron and finding no hook to hang it on in the kitchen, brought it back into the living room and folded it into her bag. She pulled out another change of costume promptly and then excused herself to the bathroom. He watched her closely during this entire enterprise, but as she offered no explanation other than a reassuring smile, he did not question her.

* * *

><p>In the bathroom, as she suited herself up for what she considered to be the greatest challenge of the night, both for herself and for her sensei, she tried to calm herself by holding a private pep rally.<p>

_It will be fine. Remember the things that Yamada-sensei told you. Remember that you have Yamada-sensei's signed order. _ She did have it, right there in the pocket of her robe, should she be required to produce it. _It'll be just like bathing Tsukushi when he was little, or helping Grandpapa wash his back. It's just something you have to do to help someone sometimes. If I was hurt, someone would have to help me bathe. It's a little scary, but I have to be brave and confident. I have to hold my ground, otherwise he'll try to refuse, and then he runs a high chance of hurting himself again while he tries to do it himself. A second concussion can be fatal if it happens before the first has had time to sufficiently heal, and the bathroom is the most likely location for a household concussion._

She was parroting the warnings she'd received from Yamada as if they were a mantra to calm herself. At last, she balled her hands into fists and took a deep breath.

_I can do this. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. _She was trembling._ It's just a normal part of life. I have to get accustomed to all of him. It's nothing strange. It's nothing scary. I'm being practical._

And of course it wasn't only scary. It was also thrilling. It was also exciting, and she felt as if she were hung upside down and all the blood was rushing to her head. She was anxious, but it was the anticipation that was making her tremble. She knew honestly that she shouldn't be _afraid _of his body any more than she was of her own. That was very silly. It was just a body, just like her own, and it belonged to the person she loved the very most in the entire world. But it was also mysterious and unknown because it was _his_ body. That was the part that was thrilling, and also the part that was a little terrifying.

_Why am I afraid? _she thought uncertainly, still trembling a little. _I know I shouldn't be. I know I shouldn't be afraid. I can't be afraid of sensei, not any part of him. I knew what I was getting into when I asked to do this._ She gritted her teeth a little. _And anyway, if it wasn't me, then it might well be _that woman.

Jealousy and anger briefly overwhelmed her fear, but then she was forcing herself to breathe deeply, to calm herself down. She was a little giddy on the endorphin rush of adrenaline now, the same feeling she got when she played in concerts, the same feeling that had overwhelmed her earlier when she had lost her footing on the stairs.

_Breathe. Breathe, _she thought. Her head cleared a little. _Why am I ever afraid when I'm around Himuro-sensei? It's always for the same reason. I'm afraid I'll do something and he won't like me any more. I'm afraid I'll disappoint him. I'm afraid I'll disappoint him!_ She bounced on her feet with a start. _That's it. That's it! That's why I'm afraid._

Having understood this part of her fear, Midori was overcome with her giddiness and began to laugh helplessly, covering her mouth with her hands to stifle her giggles, lest Himuro, still sitting out in the living room, think she had taken total leave of her senses. She laughed for a long time, letting her own manic hysteria bubble out of her, and she felt much better for it.

Having laughed herself quite out, Midori finished changing as silent and grave as a judge, and found herself much more relaxed and confident than she had been when she had come into the bathroom. She familiarized herself with the layout and then consulted her watch as she took it off and placed it on top of her folded clothes. Although it felt like half a lifetime, she had only been in the bathroom for seven minutes.

Feeling resolute in her duties, she slipped her house shoes on and went to face Himuro.

* * *

><p>Himuro was sitting on the sofa with his eyes closed, although he was not asleep. The fingers of his good hand tapped out a cadence on one of his knees. He was remembering a piece of music. Watching his fingers beat an agitated rhythm on his trouser leg, she made a guess as to what he was listening to in his mind, and hummed a little. He started and opened his eyes to find her standing in front of him wearing a bathrobe and slippers.<p>

"I was very wrong?" she asked curiously, tilting her head to the side a little. "Mephisto Waltz? I was sure you had Liszt on the brain."

He said nothing for a long moment, then at last confirmed, "Mephisto Waltz." He was frowning at her, although it was a complicated, confused sort of frown, as if his mouth didn't know itself the kind of shape it wanted to turn itself into.

Well, that was all right. She hadn't expected this to be simple and easy. She was going to have to be patient, tactful, and as stubborn as a concrete donkey. Yamada had advised her on this. She had decided it was best to be plain and direct, so he could tell that she had thought things through and was being practical and professional.

"Now it's time for a bath," she said frankly, and put her hands on her hips in a matronly way.

Himuro said nothing at first, seemed to be thinking it over, then said, "You've already seen the bathroom. If you're in need of anything, if I have it here you're welcome to use it."

"No, sensei," she corrected patiently. "It's time for your bath, and I've got to help you."

Himuro said nothing, and for a long span of moments they stared at each other silently.

Then he said, "Absolutely not." in his best '_this is final_' tone.

Midori was ready for this reaction. It was the one she had most expected.

"Absolutely _yes_," she answered determinedly. She knew very well that Himuro was always put off balance when he issued a 'this is final' commandment and she did not immediately comply, and she was ready to take advantage of his mild disorder and press the attack for a quick victory. She was going to hit him with all she had as quickly as possible, and hopefully overrun his defenses. "Sensei, you need to bathe. You've had a long, difficult day and you know very well that you're dirty," she had decided not to mince words, but be as plainspoken as possible. "You need to be nice and clean if you're going to have a restful night and a good sleep. You can't bathe on your own because I know you're still dizzy, and we can't risk you having another fall. You also only have one good arm. I'm going to have to wrap your other wrist and hand up while you wash to keep it dry. I'll get you a towel to wear so you won't be embarrassed. All you have to do is sit still and let yourself be washed and then I'll help you into the furo to soak."

"It is entirely inappropriate," he refused adamantly, his crossness was plain in his voice. "You're a high school student - "

"Which means I'm perfectly old enough to be sensible and to be of help to you," she interrupted, short and non-nonsense. "Obviously everyone else agrees, or they wouldn't have let me come this evening. Obviously _you_ agree, or you wouldn't have allowed me to come," she declared, mildly triumphant. She had set up the trap now, and was just waiting for him to charge right into it.

"They did not intend for you to engage in such behavior. If they had I am sure no one would have allowed you - "

"This is _exactly _the behavior I am expected to engage in while I'm taking care of you," she declared, and then produced her smoking gun. It was her little address book, with all the notes for Himuro's care listed, with one sentence underlined, circled, and initialed. The entire thing was signed at the bottom by Yamada-sensei. "Now you promised you'd behave yourself. I haven't asked you to do anything untoward. I'm just going to help you take a bath. Don't make it sound worse than it is. I help Grandpapa when he bathes all the time."

Himuro stared at the notebook's notarized page as if he wished to deny its existence. If he listened to the rest of what Midori had to say, he gave no sign. Finally he spoke, and his tone was low and full of force.

"Yumeno. I said. _Absolutely not._"

"_Reiichi_," she snapped in sharp retort and brought all of her concern for him to bear heavily. She had to be confident and self-assured. If she gave in, he would hurt himself again, but this time it would be for no reason but his pride, and it would be all her fault. She remained grave and authoritative, which turned out to be a devastating shock tactic in her favor. "I have told you how it is going to be and that is how it is going to be. I have enough to do without you being childish. You'll have dinner after you take a bath. For now, it's time to take a bath."

Although the heights of his refusal and seemed grim and insurmountable, as if he planned to take his own life before thinking of giving in, all at once his defiance crumbled, and he was left among the ruins of his protests. He knew he was demanding much from her already, and he had no desire to aggravate her with his own poor behavior. She was being sensible. He was being childish.

"All right," he said, because he knew very well he was still dizzy, and while he might have denied this out of some misplaced sense of decency, she was thinking shrewdly and practically.

"Good," she said, and nodded once smartly. "Now take your trousers off. I think it'll be easier for you to do it out here on the sofa while you're sitting down. Can you unbuckle your belt with one hand?" she worried. "If you can't - "

He could.

* * *

><p>Somehow, after a cavalcade of disorder and at least one near collapse of the Strategic Alliance to Get Himuro Reiichi Bathed, the mathematics instructor found himself clad only in a towel, sullenly sitting on a little bath stool, his injured wrist and hand wrapped up tightly in cellophane. Once he had agreed to this absurd scenario, he found that Midori's momentum had come down on him like an avalanche, and he had been swept away haplessly until he had at last found himself in this surely untenable position.<p>

Midori herself appeared to be an engine of industry. She whirled about him this way and that, gathering up soaps and cloths and cleansers and depositing them neatly close at hand, so that once she settled in to the business of bathing him, she could do so adroitly. All the while she was humming a Gershwin tune with gusto, occasionally breaking into brief runs of lyrics, before getting lost in the music again. Himuro sat silently, and brooded on his fate and on the necessary brightness of the bathroom, which had no variable control of its lighting. As a compromise, Midori had only turned on one of the two fixtures, but the bathroom, floored in reflective while tile, was still brighter than the rest of the house.

Finally, what could be prepared had been prepared, and Midori, who had come to stand next to him, began fiddling with the belt of her robe. His heart stopped.

It did not beat for nearly three seconds.

Then, through sheer willpower alone, he managed to blurt out, "You're not taking your robe off - "

Her cheeks flushed a little, but she did not desist in removing her robe, saying in a very grown-up and matter-of-fact way, "Of course I am. Otherwise it'll get wet."

As Himuro sat there, watching her in dumb, mortified, entranced fascination, he resigned himself to the fact that his life as he knew it was over. He certainly could not go back to Habataki Gakuen, back among her cheerful, illiterate schoolmates, with their wild hijinks and their poor decorum, and teach algebra and calculus. He had met Eve, and now he was to know Eden, and there would be no going back from that.

And then she was hanging the robe on a hook by the door, and Himuro found himself staring at a great deal of pink.

And ruffles.

Instead of being naked (nude, bare, dishabille) as he had feared (hoped) feared, Midori was wearing a sweet one-piece bathing suit, trimmed in ruffles, well-placed ribbons, and figured over in _strawberries and cherries_. Her face was still a little flushed as she paused to pin her hair up, but she had a look of mild superiority, of _see-I-told-you-so_, that was a little maddening. She apparently found herself very presentable, and dressed quite conservatively, but although this was perhaps a little better than Himuro had hoped (feared) it was still much more than he had prepared himself for. The crisis of seeing her without a stitch had passed from his mind and was now a matter of the mythic past, but the trouble of having her so close to him in such an _adorable _unsuitablebathing suit was now omnipresent and terrible in its own way.

He had never seen her in a bathing suit, not even in the plain navy suit that was school issued standard, because he had carefully avoided every chance that he might. It was not that he doubted his own resolve and self control (well, perhaps it was that, entirely) but rather that he felt it was the most prudent choice to remain as far from her lithe, sweet, half-clad figure as possible, to keep his own personal image of it as vague, uninformed, and uninterested as possible. But now here she was, in his own bathroom, wearing ribbons and ruffles and looking fresh and artless and _impossibly interesting_. He had been right the first time. There would be no going back from this.

He was dizzy with the thought of it, or perhaps just dizzy from his head injury. He closed his eyes, and immediately he felt her warm fingers on his shoulder as she leaned in close to him and he could smell her, a slight smell of sweat, the warm dustiness of her hair, the familiar animal smell of her skin, and the sweetness of powder. This was Midori. He felt utterly destroyed.

"Are you all right, sensei?" she was honestly concerned, and he could hear the worry in her voice. "If you're feeling nauseous again then I should call the hospital - "

"I'm fine," Himuro answered shortly, with little difficulty. His mind was still reeling from her closeness, turning circles around the strange familiarity of her scent.

"Are you sure?" Midori did not seem convinced. "If you're feeling ill, even if you're not nauseous, then maybe I should help you to the bed where you can lie down. I'm sorry if I've pushed you too hard - "

He realized that she was not going to be reassured unless he opened his eyes and looked at her squarely, and he also realized, that having come this far, he had no option but to continue forward and to face this difficulty as best he could. If he retreated now, if he refused to look at her, he knew that he would never be able to look at her again. Not being able to have her near him, to have her close and comforting and entirely underfoot, it was already something that had become impossible to bear.

He opened his eyes and looked at her steadily for a moment, terrified and consumed by her closeness, then he lowered his eyes, his own cheeks flushed, despite himself.

"I'm fine, Yumeno. Honestly," he said, and she smiled in response, clearly relieved.

"I'm glad," she said, and rocked back on her heels, giving him the peace of a little distance between them. She was so relieved that she apparently felt the need to tease him, just a little. "Although I wish that you would call me 'Midori,' at least while I'm helping with the bath. If you keep calling me 'Yumeno' I'm going to think I'm in homeroom."

He had regained his footing enough to deliver his own characteristic response, and this in itself was reassuring, helped him to frame his relationship with her in a way he could accept. "I will call you Yumeno regardless of the situation, because that is what is appropriate." It was a Maginot line, to be sure, but it was one of the only lines of defense he had.

"All right, sensei," she chimed in obediently, and without further comment, she settled in to bathe him.

Although in the beginning his muscles were as tense as if rigor mortis had set in prematurely, inevitably he relaxed as she worked, because he found she was very patient and gentle. He had not had the pleasure of someone else grooming him since had been a very small boy, for Himuro Reiichi had begun taking care of his own needs independently from a very young age. But what he discovered, as he relaxed under her hands, and the lather of the soap and the brisk spray of water, was that being cared for in such a simple, intimate way was intensely pleasing. He forgot his preoccupation with her pink ruffly bathing suit, with her enticing, familiar smell, with the narrow slimness of her thighs, and instead fell back into honest, unguarded pleasure. He let himself be cared for.

Midori felt him relaxing under her hands as she worked diligently to clean him up, and this made her feel very warm inside. It was what she wanted, to be able to help him when he was troubled, to give him comfort when he was hurt. His skin was warm and firm, and a little pebbly when it was wet. She had never ever touched him so much and so often, and so _thoroughly, _and she could not say when she would ever have the chance to do so again, so her insides were a mix of emotions: excitement, delight, warmth, happiness, nervousness, comfort, worry, delirium, and all of them ruled, as best she could rule them, by her desire to care for him, and to care for him _well_.

As she patiently washed and rinsed, working her fingers under the cloth to loosen his tired, strained muscles, she felt impossibly close to him. Neither of them spoke, and neither of them felt a need to speak. They were communicating solely with their bodies, and this communication was very honest and direct, without the difficulties of speech. She said _I love you_, and if he ever doubted the intensity, the clear sincerity of that statement, then he did not now, not at this moment. He could not, because it was obviously true. And he said, in return, _I accept what you give to me_. He was not yet ready, even now, to honestly return her love. It was too difficult, and he did not know how. He was still weighing her against the balance of the rest of his life, as if he had to choose only one of them. He had already discovered that he was unwilling and unable to give her up, but he struggled on, trying to hold onto his life as it was, fearing change, fearing that it would all come down around his ears. He was terrified of loving her, and yet he knew he already did. But he could not tell her for a hundred thousand reasons: because he was afraid of change, because he thought she deserved something better than what he could give her, because he thought it would break some secret trust in his role as her teacher and her mentor, because he was terrified of rejection, because he feared she would hate his ugly, selfish, possessive heart, because somehow, their being together did not mesh with the separate futures that he had already imagined for the two of them in great detail.

So he could not and would not say that he loved her, no matter how much he did, and no matter how often she said it to him, in words or in actions.

He said only,_ I accept_.

From her pile of bathing goods she produced a pink shower hat, took away his glasses, and proceeded to wet down his hair, and then lather it up into a foam that smelled of flowers, delicately mindful that he had recently fallen down and nearly broken his crown.

He tried very hard to ignore the fact that her breasts were pressed against his damp, bare back as she lathered up his hair and tried instead to focus on the fact that she seemed intent on making him smell like a spring garden.

"You brought that from home?" he ventured dubiously. It had certainly not come from his cabinet.

"Oh yes," she answered cheerfully enough. "It's got lavender oil in it, which helps release serotonin and makes you relax. It also smells very nice. I like to use it when I've had a hard week. I'd say that so far, you've had a hard week. I brought the shower hat too," she volunteered. "I didn't imagine you had one, and it makes it so much nicer when someone else is washing your hair. I've used them ever since I was little."

Himuro had used them when he was little as well, although he could not clearly remember the last time he had worn one. Not since he had been in short pants certainly. Perhaps not since his preschool days. It was as he was musing over this that something about the way she had spoken about shower hats struck him.

"Wait," he said, without intending to, "You've used them _since _you were little. Meaning - "

He trailed off, because the meaning was in fact perfectly clear, and he began to wish he had never said anything at all.

She was apparently happy to volunteer further information. "Meaning I still use them. Satomi-chan and I bathe together all the time. I always make her wash my hair, because it just feels nice, doesn't it? We're sisters, aren't we?"

They certainly were.

He tried very very hard not to imagine anything in connection with this latest revelation, and was sadly, not particularly successful. He was saved from further embarrassment by Midori's timely announcement, "And now it's time for the rinse!" and was glad of the sobering shower of water that carried away the last of the soapy foam that smelled of lavender.

Now that he was fully cleaned and rinsed, Midori carefully helped him into the furo, and Himuro felt grateful for distance between them after such a harrowing encounter, until he realized that he would be left alone with his thoughts. He sank into the water and let the warmth surround him, keeping his wrapped, injured wrist laid along the side of the tub, and Midori bustled back into the other half of the bathroom, where he heard the sounds of her drying off, and then apparently pulling her robe on again.

"Now you have a good soak, sensei," she was advising. "Yamada-sensei said that you were going to be really sore for the next few days, so having a good soak ought to make you feel better. I'm just going to go get my book, and I'll wait out here until you're ready to get out. Promise you won't try and get out until you let me know. Please promise, sensei. It's very very important."

She sounded worried again. He promised, and she briefly left to fetch her book from the other room, and then Himuro heard her settle to sit on the little stool and read while he soaked. He sighed, leaned back against the wall of the tub and closed his eyes, trying his best not to think of anything at all.

* * *

><p><span>Please Note:<span> Canonically, it is Liszt's _Un Sospiro_ that the heroine hears Himuro playing in the cutscene where she realizes that he plays the piano. Midori, however, discovers his playing much earlier due to her stalking of the music room. It is _Liebestraum No. 3_ that she hears him play in one of their earliest encounters. I thought I would make this explicitly clear, in case anyone thought I simply mistook the song.


	4. I Will Boldly Light That Lamp

**Just Another Word for 'You'**

_Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side First Love_

_Himuro Reiichi x Heroine_

_**By Gabihime at gmail dot com**_

_Part Four: I Will Boldly Light that Lamp, and We Shall Walk Together_

* * *

><p>Ultimately, Himuro reflected, the bath had been a good idea. Although he had been dubious (horrified? compelled? horrified and compelled?) about her proposal at the outset, now that the terrible gauntlet of pink ribboned bathing suit, lavender shampoo, and too much dizzyingly interesting skin had been run, he found himself relaxing in the warm water, despite the day's many and varied events. Midori had been right. A long, quiet bath was just what he needed. It was calming his discordant nerves. Perhaps it was the shampoo with the lavender oil, or simply the fact that she had been so honest and straightforward with her care. No matter his opinions concerning them, it was difficult to mistake Midori's intentions toward him, and yet despite the great temptation of the situation, she had not done anything to him that he could really qualify as inappropriate. She really was behaving herself, as she had promised, and doing her best to take care of him without any strings attached.<p>

Of course, there was another possibility. It was possible that he had already skidded so far down the slope of restraint that he could no longer properly judge what was appropriate or inappropriate anymore.

In that case -

He didn't really want to dwell on it. If that was the case, then he was already like a race horse with a broken leg. His life as he had known it was over, and there could be only one solution.

Still feeling moody and sullen despite the pleasing temperature of the water and the pleasing (utterly inappropriate) memory of pale, gentle hands, Himuro sank into the water and brooded, blowing bubbles like a sea dragon, or a particularly petulant child.

On the other side of the wall, Midori sat on the hard rubber bath stool and tried very hard to read the manga she had brought. Instead she found herself listening to the patient sound of the water lapping against the walls of the furo as Himuro shifted around. Now that she was no longer industriously occupied with lathering, washing, and rinsing, she found herself with a number of new experiences to dwell on with flushed cheeks and a skipping heart.

As terrifying as it had been so far, perhaps the most terrifying part was how easy it had all been.

_I could just let myself fall into this, _she realized, her eyes shut so tightly her ears roared. _I could let myself fall into this now, and never go back. I could give up anything just to stay this way, just to make this time last. I could give up music._

This was the strange and terrifying realization, the one she wanted to instinctively repulse, to deny automatically, reflexively, like gagging on something she just couldn't swallow.

But even as her stomach trembled, her heart had finally understood it. Music was her life, her soul, her reason for being, but she now had a sober awareness that she would give it up, the piano, the flute, even the violin, if it meant that she might stay with Himuro here, in this place, doing only the simple things she had done this evening.

It was not something she had ever thought of before: that she might be willing to give up one to have the other.

Oh, of course she had spent no little time spinning elaborate air castles involving Himuro and herself, in which he composed touching love songs that he dedicated to her, or proposed marriage in a whirlwind of cherry blossoms after having confessed his ardent and long-time affections. She had even imagined a magical and delightful life straight out of the pages of one of her high school manga in which they secretly married and then continued to attend school together, ostensibly as teacher and student, but really as hilariously charming husband and wife. In this scenario she always packed his lunch in the morning and said "Welcome home, darling!" in the evening, and he gave her lots of detention and was always shoving her up against walls and covering her mouth so their clandestine secret would not be discovered by the high school authorities at large.

But she had never really weighed the two things against one another: Himuro and her music. She had never really considered them as separate entities. One of the ways she loved Himuro was through her music. He was her teacher and her music coach, and she loved him because he was both of those things. But in the future, it was possible that he might be neither. Once she was no longer in the care of Habataki Gakuen, would she no longer be in the care of Himuro Reiichi? She had simply taken it for granted that he would always be with her on the path of music. They both loved music so much, had made it a central element of their lives, that it had seemed only natural to her. But what was natural to her, was not necessarily natural to him. She had spent much of her life abroad, learning under music masters in France and Italy, while he had spent his life entirely in Japan, embracing music in his own way, spending his time caring for his students and playing jazz piano in a club on the weekends. If music pulled her in one direction, and her sensei pulled her in another, how would she even begin to decide which to follow?

If she had been asked to think about the situation logically, to weigh all the pros and cons and then make a careful, deliberate decision, she would have simply ended up sobbing noisily until someone soothed her and covered the upsetting choice with a blanket so she wouldn't have to look at it. Given that set of expectations, she would have never been able to make any choice at all, would have simply sat there, crying inconsolably until someone had made the choice for her.

But now she had the answer to the question, with slow, quiet, dreadful certainty. She had not carefully considered anything, nor tabulated any data. She did not even have to think about it.

She could not give up Himuro Reiichi. She would not. It was already a thing that had become impossible.

She would no longer follow her music if it led her one step away from him.

_One step becomes two, _she thought, _and two become a dozen, and then I look back and the gulf between us has become unbridgeable, not because I've stopped loving you, but because we've become different people._ Midori thought of Kobayashi Hidemi and this time it was without animosity, just a sad certainty. _If I ever leave him, even once, there will be no coming back. There'll be nothing left to come back to._

She thought of Beethoven and Therese Malfatti and her heart trembled. It would pull out her insides to lose him.

It wasn't anything elaborate or embroidered. This time it wasn't a magnificent ladder of perhapses, a dream of fairies and sugar-spun cloud castles where her sensei patted her head (or her bottom) then swept her off in a billowy gown trimmed with feathers and pearls to an altar in a cathedral with stained glass windows showing scenes of steadfast love rewarded. This time it was bare and naked and honest, and it was also embarrassing, because she found that she had fewer scruples than she had previously imagined. She didn't really want a ring, a party, or even any vows. She just wanted him to let her be close. Regardless of the circumstances. Regardless of the cost.

_If he asked me to stay by his side, I'd stay by his side, _Midori thought this out slowly, finding a new understanding of the words her heart had accepted so glibly before. _Now. Tomorrow. The day after that. No matter who disapproved. No matter how difficult it was. Not because of any guarantee, but because I don't have any other way to be._

She looked hard at the volume of manga in her lap and thought about great difficulties overcome with love and courage.

_Life is very difficult, _she thought helplessly.

"Yumeno," came Himuro's voice unexpectedly from the other side of the wall, "Sing something. Hum something."

It was a short, self-evident command. Her heart smiled, eased from its troubles by his quiet request.

"What shall I sing, sensei?" she asked obediently. She was not a grand dame of the opera, but she would do her very best to be pleasing.

"Whatever you want. Whatever you like. Just sing something. I've been thinking too much."

She laughed then, because weren't they a pair? Himuro couldn't have anticipated the reason for her laugh, would not have guessed the difficult truths Midori had been wrestling with, even as he wrestled with his own, but simply accepted her laugh for what it was: an expression of pleasure (it was also an expression of relief, which they were both looking for).

Although her mind was filled with sheaves and sheaves of the great masterpieces of music, many of which had choral accompaniments, the only thing Midori could think of to sing was this:

_"La bella lavanderina che lava i fazzoletti per i poveretti della città. Fai un salto, fanne un altro, fai la giravolta, falla un'altra volta, guarda in su, guarda in giù~ dai un bacio a chi vuoi tu."_

The song was so simple and childish, and Midori sang it so earnestly that the difficult mood was broken, and they both laughed.

"That sounds like a nursery rhyme," Himuro observed.

"It is," Midori admitted pleasantly. "Now it's your turn. You sing one."

Midori expected him to protest, because singing nursery rhymes was something Himuro Reiichi certainly did not do, certainly not to an inquisitive student while stark naked and terribly sober. But whether it was due to his recent head injury or not, he did not protest, and she was soon leaning forward to hear him sing the rhyme he chose. His voice was warm and gentle and it all seemed strangely natural to listen to him thrum out the repeating sounds, as if they always sat together in the warm bath trading nursery songs with one another.

"Mama, I'll lend her my umbrella. Won't you please use this umbrella. Pitchi, pitchi chap, chap ran, ran ran," he sang simply, and the song ran along with him, and at the end she clapped.

Instead of responding to this affectionate praise, he simply commanded, "Next."

She obliged, this time choosing a French rhyme she had learned when she was a small girl, and they went on trading nursery rhymes and nonsense songs with one another until his skin puckered and they were both tired from laughing.

* * *

><p>When he was finally done soaking and while the afterglow of their companionable laughter was still warm in the air, she helped him out of the furo and back out to the rubber stool in the main part of the bathroom, and proceeded to patiently and gently dry his hair, his back, and his shoulders. Although she was willing enough to be as thorough with his drying as she had with his washing, he insisted firmly that she had done enough and that he could finish very well by himself, seated safely on the stool.<p>

After extracting a promise that he would call for her before attempting to stand, and moving his bathrobe into arm's reach, she reluctantly left him alone in the bathroom to get himself dressed again, although she sensibly left the door partially open so that she might hear if he called for her.

As she emerged from the bathroom she was greeted by musical piping from the kitchen again, and after snagging her apron from her bag, made haste to make sure that their dinner was finished appropriately.

By the time Himuro called for her assistance, she had already pulled down the low dining table that folded into the wall and set it carefully and pleasingly with the simple meal she had prepared. Satomi had brought her an extra bowl, plate, and Midori's own chopsticks from home, and with these extra pieces she managed to stretch out Himuro's woeful stock of tableware so that all of the food could be brought to the table appropriately.

Her heart trembled a little as she went to fetch him back to dinner, because she was nervous that he might not like what she had made. It was all very simple fare, because she recalled how nauseous he had been earlier, and did not want to upset his stomach with rich food. She had also striven to put dishes on the table that were healthful and would help kick start his healing process.

If he had any objections to the meal he made no sign, simply allowed himself to be led to the table and seated. Midori had been unable to find any seating cushions, and Himuro briefly indicated that there were none, so they both sat on their feet on the hardwood, and Midori felt as if she might have been at a tea ceremony, as Himuro very carefully ate the morsels she had placed in front of him in grave, mannerly silence.

Because she did not want to seem uncouth, she ate in silence too, trying her best to match his formal mood so as not to offend him.

Then she realized how silly it all was. They were sitting together, alone in his apartment, wearing bathrobes at dinner. They were not in attendance on the emperor.

She let out a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a laugh and he looked up at her sharply, as if demanding an explanation.

"Himurochi, I told you, I'm not other people," she reminded him playfully.

In response, he pressed his lips into a thin line and seemed to tense up for several seconds before his shoulders slumped and he looked away.

"Reiichi," he said, his voice so soft that she almost didn't hear, because he had turned his face away from her.

She moved to get to her feet and go to his side, because she was very worried that he was feeling ill again, possibly from the effort of trying to eat his dinner. Besides, she couldn't make sense at all of what he meant, repeating his own name to himself.

He thrust his uninjured hand out across the table, palm flat and fingers spread, to stay her motion, and turned back to face her, although it appeared to be very difficult for him. He kept his eyes on the table, on the food that she had so carefully arranged for his dinner.

"Reiichi," he repeated, a little louder, and a faint tinge of color crept into his cheeks as he struggled to continue. "We're alone, so it's all right if you call me 'Reiichi.'"

The moment he managed to force his meaning out into the air between them, Yumeno Midori's personal time halted entirely.

The earth revolved slowly, and her heart beat.

And then she was struggling to get her own thoughts and wishes out, shy, excited, and utterly overwhelmed by her feelings for him.

"Midori," she stuttered, then shook her head, the color rising prettily to her own cheeks. "Midori," she repeated, trying to get her intentions out. "Will you call me Midori? When we're alone, whenever you like, will you please?"

This request seemed to catch him entirely off guard, although it seemed to her to be a natural progression. He set his lips in a thin line again.

"No," he said flatly, his eyes narrowed.

"But why?" Midori asked, flabbergasted. "It's exactly the same thing! Anyway, we're all alone, so no one will hear you but me. You don't have to say it all the time if you don't want to. Just sometimes. Sometimes, sensei, all right? Just sometimes?" she was wheedling hard now, her hands clasped tightly in her lap as she leaned forward, a knot of anticipation.

"No," he repeated, a little more firmly, the thin line of his lips turning down slightly. "I won't. That is that and this is this and they are unrelated."

Midori threw her hands up into the air in frustration and asked a petulant but rhetorical question. "Sensei, why are you so horrible all the time?"

"I would like to remind you that you are the one who persisted in calling me 'Reiichi' in the first place," he answered her crossly, his mouth still turned down into the sort of frown that would have chilled the heart of many a girl.

"Well, I won't call you 'Reiichi,' if you won't call me 'Midori,'" she retorted defiantly.

In response, the crossed his arms over his chest and turned his face away from her and was silent. He was still frowning - or was he? Was he?

_He's pouting,_ she realized with a start, _I bet he doesn't even have any idea that he's pouting to get his way._ She sighed inwardly.

"Reiichi," she began gently, "Reiichi, I'm sorry I was cross with you. I don't really think you're horrible," she apologized, and then thought absently, _Except sometimes_. "I like you the way you are, and I don't want you to be different. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

Slowly, he turned back to look at her, and there was still some color in his cheeks.

"It's all right," he began formally, and then he shook his head briefly, as if clearing it. "I'm sorry, Yumeno," he began awkwardly. "I - "

He didn't seem to know how to continue, so she simply smiled at him gently and shook her head, and he fell silent.

_I shouldn't ask him for things he's not ready to give, _she chided herself. _He's already so good to me._

"Did you get enough to eat?" she asked him hopefully, an attempt to gracefully change the subject.

Himuro nodded once.

"Yes," he said, "Thank you for preparing dinner. It was all very good. I'm not used to eating so well," he confessed.

"I was happy to make the food," Midori answered earnestly, "Because it was for you."

His cheeks colored again faintly and he turned his head to look at the wall as he cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Besides," she continued cheerfully, politely disregarding his obvious embarrassment, "Food always tastes better when you share it with someone."

"I suppose," he said, after a long moment. "It does."

* * *

><p>After dinner had been finished, it was all Midori could do to convince Himuro that he ought not put on a fresh suit, shirt, and tie. He would not suffer to sit around the rest of the evening in his bathrobe, as Midori sincerely wished he would, and after some mild argument, it was finally resolved that he would change - with her dutifully offered assistance - into some pyjamas, and thus pass the remainder of the evening in relative comfort.<p>

Midori was relieved when he finally agreed to this suggestion, as she had had to lay into him hard before he acquiesced. She had gravely reminded him that pointless additional changes of clothing kept him on his feet longer and therefore led to a greater chance of a compounded injury, in addition to causing extra work for her. Weighed down heavily by a guilty conscience, Himuro submitted to being assisted into his pyjamas, although he again refused her help with his trousers, instead seating himself on the bed and banishing her to the outside of the half open bedroom door while he wriggled into them.

His pyjamas, like much of the rest of his house, were grey. Midori would have been thrilled to discover that on regular evenings, when he did not have to tangle repeatedly with his eager and helpful pet student, he generally only wore pyjama bottoms, going about in his robe until it was time to turn in, when he slept _entirely _without a shirt. However, given how his own thoughts had wandered both during the bath and afterward, Himuro felt the need to cocoon himself in as many layers of clothing as possible, although whether it was to preserve her chastity or his own he could not have said.

He had wanted to dress himself in a clean suit and tie because this provided at least the comforting _illusion _of order, of appropriateness, of propriety. Framing their relationship in the idiom of school gave him something he felt that he could accept, something he thought he understood. Here in his own home, away from the eyes of others, he had a difficult time maintaining the imaginary boundaries he had set for himself.

He had no idea why he had prompted her to call him by his given name, to lose the honorifics he was always insisting on like a charm to keep away ghosts in the night. _As if she needed prompting_. But he had prompted her just the same, like a child poking a snake with a stick to see if it is dead, and he had found his position in relation to her becoming rapidly unstable as a result: because of what she demanded, because of what she expected, because of what she obviously _wanted_.

What was it that he wanted?

He had no idea.

...He had _some _idea.

_He absolutely would not think about it._

He found himself constantly thinking about it.

_We're alone, so it's all right if you call me 'Reiichi.'_

He had stopped thinking of her as if she were a student. That convenient fiction had become too fragile for him to maintain, even with his denial engines running at maximum propulsion.

He was grasping for something to hold onto, anything familiar, something to lash himself to, like a man wandering aimlessly in a whiteout blizzard.

Every step likely led him into greater mortal peril, no matter the direction he chose, and the only other option was to do nothing at all, to remain motionless, and inevitably freeze to death.

He was trying his utmost to maintain a grip on his life, such as it was. Therefore he absolutely could not possibly wander around his house in a bathrobe and pyjama trousers, could not corner her in the kitchen as she cleaned up after making their dinner, could not lean close to her and suggest in a low voice that she ought to call him what he wanted her to call him.

_He would not think about it. _

_He would not think about any of it._

Midori had helped him button every single button of his seldom used pyjama shirt. He had made sure every single button was done up, and firmly, as if the buttons were holy seals to keep his uncertain desires in check, or an aegis from heaven to protect him from her gentle, curious eyes.

At last, he was as ready as could be expected, and called for her to come back into the room with him. He could not avoid her any more than he could avoid himself.

And that was it.

Together.

That was the word that kept assaulting his brain.

_._

That was what he could not think about.

Midori was smiling her same, patient smile when she came to assist him to his feet. Honestly, her behavior toward him had not substantively changed. She was the same Midori now as she had been yesterday. What had broken in the course of the terrible fall had been his frame of reference. He had lost his ability to classify the two of them as members of different social castes, as separate and unrelated individuals brought together only by the circumstance of school, who only interacted with one another as teacher and student.

Before the word 'student' had stood out like a warning written in blood, dividing the two of them, allowing him to focus, allowing him to classify her, allowing him to understand who she was to him. Like his refusal to call her by her given name, it had stood as an anchor of his world, as a pillar that held up the sky.

Now he had lost that word 'student,' had lost the ability to classify her, and was unsure what word to use in its place.

No, not unsure. He was _terrified _of the next word he might seek to define her with.

They were nearly back to the sofa when he suddenly blurted out, "You shouldn't call me 'Reiichi' any longer. You should call me 'Himuro-sensei.'"

He could not look at her then, his cheeks hot from shame and his mind reeling in frustration, so instead he looked away so he would not see her hurt, looked at anything, at the wall, at the closed and blinded window, at the still weight of the silent piano.

And then he felt a small, cool hand on his forehead, and looked down startled to find her standing right in front of him, close enough to seize and carry off, standing up on her tip toes, straining to feel his temperature. She looked troubled, but not apparently by what he had said.

"Reiichi," she began seriously, "Are you feeling all right? You're acting a little strangely. Does your head hurt?"

Although she had been in his personal space countless times during the course of the day, Himuro found that this was one time that he absolutely could not handle her closeness, and made to put both his hands on his shoulders to push her away, attempting to backpedal rapidly as he did.

But Midori, who had been keenly watching him for signs of trouble, felt him move unsteadily and threw her arms tightly around his middle, staggering as she tried to keep them both upright, planting her feet as she fought against his weight and the dizziness that had suddenly overcome him. In one long, confused second she knew that he would fall, so she pushed off with her planted feet and twisted herself underneath him, hoping to protect his head.

Their fall was a moment of supreme confusion for both of them, a tangle of limbs and bodies. For Midori there seemed to be too much of Himuro, long legs and long arms, and his labored breath against her neck and his hair against her cheek like spider's silk. For him, there was impossibly too much of her, too much skin, too much warmth, too much give and softness. He had tried to brace himself up with his one uninjured arm as they had both collided with the hardwood floor, but his strength had deserted him and his arm had folded like a breaking matchstick. The only thing that had saved him from going face first into the floor was the fact that he had landed entirely_ on her. _

Still dizzy and confused, Himuro tried to push himself up ineffectually, but his mind swam as he struggled to sit up, and he collapsed against her again with a weak thump, and groaned reflexively as his sprained wrist was pinned under him.

He struggled briefly, and managed to get it out from underneath him, but before he could make a second attempt to move he found himself arrested by her arms, which she had wrapped around him again, trying her best to hold him still.

"_Reiichi, please_," he could hear the frantic urgency in her voice. She was pleading with him. For his own sake, she was pleading that he be still. "Please be still. You'll hurt yourself. Just relax. The dizziness will pass. Be still. _Please_."

He was terrified of her closeness, of her patience, of her acceptance, and he wanted to push away from her, to shove her out the door and then lock it behind her. He was terrified he was losing what he had left of himself, dizzy, weak, and exhausted from fighting. In that moment, he was so afraid of himself, of the future, that he might have shouted anything, might have told her anything, no matter how hurtful, no matter how untrue, so long as it meant she would leave him alone.

But he could hear the fear in her voice, could hear it plainly, even if he couldn't see it in her face from where he lay on top of her, his nose against the bottom of her earlobe, could feel her voice tremble with it in the warmth of her throat pressed against his cheek. It was fear _for _him, not fear _of _him.

He lay very still, and as she had said, the dizziness and the indescribable fear passed. He was left as silent and solemn as a ghost.

When she thought he was ready, Midori helped him sit up, moving with him until he sat on his heels and she was confident he could maintain this posture. She crouched next to him on her knees, and looked up into his face, troubled.

"Reiichi," she began uncertainly, her brows knit together, "How do you feel?"

He said nothing at first, then at last shrugged and answered tiredly, "I don't know."

Despite his best attempts, he had somehow not managed to injure himself. His wrist had hurt when he pinned it, but it seemed no worse for the wear.

Midori frowned and tried another question. "What's my name?"

Himuro sighed as he answered, "Yumeno Midori. Please close your robe."

Midori glanced down at herself and found that her bathrobe had become disheveled in their scuffle, and now hung mostly open. She was still wearing her bathing suit underneath so it wasn't as if she was _indecent _but - she tugged her robe closed and tied it again, her cheeks flushed, since Himuro, apparently exhausted by this latest encounter, had not pointedly looked away this time, and had remained watching her, his face expressionless, as she situated herself.

"Did you hit your head this time?" she asked worriedly.

"No," he said. "I didn't." He paused and thought about it before correcting himself. "I didn't hit it on the floor, if that's what you mean."

Midori's flush deepened as she thought about the implications of his frank, dry statement.

"Reiichi," she said very honestly, leaning forward to cover one of his hands with her own. "I'm worried about your brain."

At this he let out a snort which might have been a laugh. His expression didn't change, so it was hard for her to tell. He said nothing at first, only calmly took off his glasses and cleaned them carefully on the hem of his shirt.

At last he said, "Help me onto the sofa. I want to sit for a little while."

So she did.

* * *

><p>Midori watched Himuro closely for some minutes after his fall, but after having gained a seat on the sofa he seemed relatively docile. He was thinking about something again. She could tell he was thinking about something again, but whatever it was he was thinking about, he was unwilling to share it with her. He sat very still and he thought.<p>

He answered her clearly and immediately when she asked him questions, but did not attempt to engage her in further conversation. He wished to be alone with his thoughts, apparently, and she was willing to accept his wishes. After ascertaining that he didn't require anything further, she left him alone in the living room while she tidied up the kitchen and put away the food from their small meal.

When she returned to the living room, she found that he was still pensive, although a little more communicative.

She carried her overnight bag to the sofa and sat it on the ground near him, so she could look up and see his face as she rummaged through it. She unzipped it and then paused, thinking seriously before she spoke.

"Do you really not want me to call you 'Reiichi?'" she asked quietly. He had obviously been upset earlier, although she couldn't say why. She had been calling him Reiichi for months already, for so long that it had become a comfortable thing to say, like a secret shared between the two of them.

He said nothing at first, and she feared that when he did speak it would be crisp and dismissive. She did not fear that he would be cruel to her. She feared that he would shut her out. Having him close his heart to her would be a pain much worse than the sharpest reproof.

She wanted to say to him, _Give me detention for as long as you want, for the rest of my life. I don't care. Just let me stay close to you._

But she did not say this, no matter how much she wanted to, because she knew what he was turning over his head was already difficult enough.

After some time, he affixed her with a steady, serious look and said, "Use your own judgement."

Midori was so relieved that she had to quickly rub the back of her hands across her eyes as she struggled not to sniffle. To cover her obvious emotion, she said cheerfully, "Well then, I'll just have to keep doing my best!" Then she began to rummage around in her bag in earnest, something to busy herself as her heart fluttered madly. "I guess I ought to go ahead and change for bed myself," she continued pleasantly.

She had to dig to the bottom of the bag, but at last she dragged out her pajamas, and as the gauzy, black diaphanous cloud fluttered in the air between the two of them, Midori was mortified.

"What was Satomi-chan thinking?" she yelped, waving around what there was of the gauzy nightie like she was a drum major and it was her flag. "I told her to pack my regular pajamas. I can't wear this tonight!"

Himuro, who had finally begun to relax after his harrowing encounter with the hollow of Midori's throat, agreed that she could absolutely under no circumstances wear that lingerie while sleeping on his sofa, and was about to say as much when a wrapped plastic packet fell out of the nightie that Midori was still flailing around and landed like an undetonated grenade on the floor in front of them. They both stared at it.

"What exactly did Satomi-chan think I came over here to do?" Midori shrieked, and then commenced a string of embarrassed and incoherent apologies to Himuro.

As he looked at her, still flapping the gauzy nightie around and sobbing out hysterical, deranged apologies, Himuro could not help but be struck by the utter ridiculousness of their hilariously tragic situation. This was the selfsame girl he had thrown himself down a flight of stairs for, who had cried for him and cared for him to the best of her abilities, who thought of his own comfort and happiness before her own. This was the girl he had been leaning on for so long that it had ceased being unfamiliar and nerve-wracking, although he could not say when he had last leaned on anyone, even for a moment. And although he was familiar with all of her best qualities, he was also well aware of her limitations. She often teased him in a maddeningly distracting way, but this level of premeditation was entirely beyond her abilities. They were most obviously the victims of a setup, and as he imagined Midori's grave sister packing the bag deliberately and carefully, checking its contents out on a little list, he began to laugh. He was not a man who laughed openly in front of others. As a boy, he had practiced remaining straight-faced in front of a mirror for hours at a time, and now as an adult, the most he ever showed in public was the light upturn of one side of his mouth: a careful, guarded smile. He did not laugh in front of other people. But as Yumeno Midori had reminded him this evening, she wasn't really other people, and this was something his heart could not deny. When the world went a little mad around them, he found that he could laugh in front of her, whether they were trading nursery rhymes in the bath, or experiencing the fallout of intense matchmaking.

Midori had not expected Himuro to laugh, had certainly not expected him to laugh so long, with one hand across the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up and rubbing his eyes, as if he had discovered that they were the victims of the god who reveled in _schadenfreude._ His reaction was so unexpected that it caused Midori to stop shrieking and flailing. She looked at him, then looked down at the discreet little wrapper, and finally at the fluttery babydoll in her hands and at last began to laugh herself. Himuro's laugh was warm and comfortable, and it dispelled her earlier fears. She relaxed against it as they laughed together, two alone and content, the paired recipients of the best intentions gone awfully wrong.

They both laughed until their wild, uncertain emotions had been spent. As Midori caught her breath panting, she flopped over on her side on the floor, "But it still doesn't solve the problem of my pajamas. There isn't anything else in there I can wear to sleep in, except my underwear. I'm sure Satomi-chan arranged it that way on purpose."

"She certainly doesn't neglect details," Himuro agreed, leaning back against the couch. "Well, you cannot sleep in your," here he cleared his throat a little unnaturally, and turned his face away from her, "underwear. You will catch cold," he said. He did not need her sleeping in her underwear on his sofa any more than he needed her wearing that negligee.

"I've got to wear something," she protested, drawing idle circles on the floor with a finger. "I'll definitely catch cold if I just sleep naked."

Himuro coughed for several minutes in response to this simple statement, and only recovered when Midori returned from the kitchen with a glass of water for him. She patted him on the back as he accepted it, and asked several times if he was feeling nauseous again. Midori felt a little bad for baiting him, but he had given her such a scare earlier, she thought he could do with a little teasing. Himuro denied any feeling of nausea, and after taking a long drink of water, at last arrived at a solution.

"I've still got the gym clothes I wore in high school," he said. "They're clean and pressed and put away. You can wear those to sleep in."

He was worried she might have some other, more alarming counter suggestion, but she accepted his proposal with a pleasant smile and simply asked where she might find the gym clothes.

He directed her into the bedroom, and named a certain cabinet drawer by number, and she nodded and then set off.

Himuro was left alone staring at the black negligee trimmed with lace and ribbons, and that other thing, _which he would not think about, which he would not think about at all_. The ease that had mellowed his heart during his long bout of laughter was slipping away and he was developing another headache, so he used the glass of water that she had brought him to take a couple of pills and then closed his eyes to wait for her return as a (hopefully) less dangerous creature.

Contrary to his hopes, when she at last appeared again, fresh from the bath, rosy and cheerful, she might have been a Habataki pinup, although she was not coquettish at all. She was lost in the shirt that was too long for her, and she had rolled the sweats up several times so that her ankles could peep out of the bottoms. The overall effect was charming, and somehow more interesting than even the lingerie had been. In truth, this was when she was at her most attractive: simple, artless, honest, and incredibly difficult to ignore.

_She is wearing my clothes,_ he realized belatedly as he blankly stared at her. _Why did I think it would be a good idea to let her wear my clothes?_

It was another thing that once seen, could never be forgotten: her slim figure shifting playfully inside gym clothes with his name emblazoned across the back. Absurdly he felt like he was back in high school himself, and had smuggled a girl into his room, and that at any moment they might be discovered by the authorities.

He thought he ought to tell her to keep her voice down, lest they be overheard. But then, that was silly, because he was a grown man and this was his own home, and who was going to hear them?

And this was the most terrifying thought of all.

He sighed inwardly. It was going to be a very long night.

"Sensei, you were really tall even when you were in high school," Midori observed, tugging at the drawstring around her waist. "I had to pull and pull to get the waist of the bottoms tight enough so that they wouldn't just fall off."

Iron resolve saved him from another coughing fit, and he managed, "I trust that you were successful?"

"Of course," she laughed, bending down to fold the fluttery chemise back into her bag. After a moment of reflection regarding the wrapped packet on the floor, she shrugged and then put it back in her bag as well.

With the incriminating evidence removed, Himuro found he could relax at least a little, although he still found her overwhelmingly distracting.

"Mama bought that nightdress for me last year at Christmas time," Midori volunteered cheerfully. "She says that a lady ought to always have beautiful things."

Well, that answered the question of when and how Midori had come into possession of lingerie. Her family reminded him woefully of his own, sometimes.

* * *

><p>Although the hour was not particularly late, Himuro directed Midori to a particularly drawer in his bedroom, where she retrieved one blanket and one pillow with which to make herself a bed on the sofa. It was not as if he were forcing his Spartan existence on her. She might have taken a hundred blankets from the drawer and had as many pillows as she liked and he would not have begrudged her.<p>

She took only one pillow and only one blanket from the drawer because that was all there was, folded neatly and crisply, but seeming lonely and forgotten. When she asked about the state of his linens drawer he confirmed what she suspected. He had only one set of bed linens for his bed, and once a week he washed them. When they wore out, he replaced them with an identical set.

It was very much like his sad, neglected kitchen.

She refrained from sharing her opinion on the state of his life, only resolved to show him how much nicer things might be, with a little extra care.

She sat brooding over small things she might do to make his home life more pleasant over the next hour instead of reading her literature assignment like he supposed she was doing.

At last he surprised her by requesting to be taken to bed. It was still early, but it had been a very long day, and she was not surprised that he was very tired.

She helped him to the bed, dutifully tucked him in, and then brought him a glass of ice water for his bedside table. She was about to kiss him on the forehead when she remembered that he was neither her beloved grandpapa nor her wicked little brother and thought better of it.

If Himuro noticed the meaning of her half-completed movement or thought anything of it, he said nothing.

* * *

><p>With the door to the darkened bedroom left open only a sliver, so that she might hear any signs of distress from her resident patient, Midori padded softly down the hallway and retrieved her schoolbag from where she had left it in the corner of the front room. She brought it back to the perfectly organized desk that stood in the hallway flanked by neat, packed shelves, and after hesitating a moment, her hand hovering in the air, she pulled out the well-worn desk chair and sat down in it. There was an adjustable desk lamp clamped to the surface of the desk that provided welcome light and warmth. Sitting there at his desk, she could not help but recognize that his world was without what he considered to be useless ornament. Everything was plain, and simple, and functional. But although it was not cozy, there in the leather chair before the streamlined black desk, she felt suddenly enveloped by his warmth, as if he had come up behind her suddenly and wrapped his arms around her comfortingly.<p>

It was strangely not a feeling that made her heart race, as it might have in other circumstances had he done something so astonishing as wrap his arms around her. Instead she felt safe, and at the same time, privileged. She was always discovering new elements of the character of Himuro Reiichi, the sides of him heart that he did not show to others. Whether he had intended to reveal himself to her or not didn't matter, really. She paid close attention to all the subtleties he showed her, and whenever a new fragment of his hidden self was revealed, she treasured it, just as he treasured the strange, small bits of detritus that she littered on him.

They collected one another like curious naturalists, each struggling to classify the as yet unnamed subject of their life's work.

Midori's mouth curved into a slight, accepting smile, and then she moved to unpack her homework.

* * *

><p>She had worked silently for perhaps three hours, swinging her feet idly from time to time as she studied the subjunctive mood in her English grammar book and wrote out patient answers to her history questionnaire, when she decided that her brain was no longer in a spry enough state to be useful in attempting to understand the Krebs cycle. It was time to put her homework away and attempt to relax a little before she went to sleep.<p>

Thoughtfully she looked at the black score book that she had laid out next to her homework. The day had been so long and tiring that she almost thought it would be best not to work on it this evening. Surely no one would blame her. But then, her feelings were in such tight knots that she was almost overwhelmed by them. If she did not work on it tonight, then perhaps some of the best moments would be lost, some of the clearest feelings. That was something she could not really live with, no matter how tired she was. After all, there was not really that much time left until - well, until - until she would show it. She would work all her heart and feelings into it until that time. What better place to work on it than here, sitting at his desk, deep in the soul of his life?

She opened up the score book, got out her pen, and then bent her head in serious contemplation and was soon lost in the tangle of her music.

When she at last looked at her watch after completing a very difficult and yet satisfying measure, she realized that another hour had passed. It was very late by this point, and she was tired, having spent all her energy in eventful and exhausting pursuits.

She was not out of sorts, really, but the day had been an emotional roller coaster, and she was feeling a little emotionally overwrought. She longed to let her feelings out through the physical pleasure of music, either at her sensei's beautifully maintained and stately parlor grand piano, with her beloved long-time companion the garnet-red violin, her lively new schoolmate, the shining and brilliant flute, or her new bosom confidant, the pear wood recorder that Himuro had given her for her birthday, but as she had already put him to bed, she did not want to risk waking him even with soft _leggero _playing. Besides, she was almost too tired to play. Almost. Still, she ought not, not even very carefully.

Himuro was her responsibility, after all. She was his number one student, his private nurse, and after having done his shopping and undone his tie, discovered his secret treasures, made his dinner, shampooed his hair, and at last tucked him into bed, she was fairly certain she was also his girlfriend.

_You're the only one I can stand._

She flushed and found she could no longer look at his carefully organized desk straight on, could not let her eyes come to rest on the score book that she hurriedly closed after blotting it. Shy and embarrassed, she turned her eyes to the ground and studied the dark floor, where the lamp cast a pool of radiance. It all seemed pretty straight-forward when considered in light of all the evidence. She leaned back in the worn leather chair and let herself go limp, arms dangling loosely at her sides.

And to think, she'd been so worried about that Kobayashi woman, the one with the eyes that glittered like a jaguar's and the heart made out of anthracite. How silly she was to worry when this very day he had said to her so needfully, _Midori, don't leave._

Falling back into the memory of the day, thinking of how often his arresting, sea colored eyes had been on her so heavily, of how he had leaned on her, how the weight of his body had borne down on her, pressing her against the floor, how he had sung nursery songs with her, and said _Reiichi. We're alone, so you can call me Reiichi _-

The knock at the door was so abrupt that she jumped at the sound and slid out of the desk chair with a surprised thump, landing ineffectually on her bottom. She scrambled to her feet immediately, as the erratic rapping had continued unabated, and although the idea of receiving a visitor so late at night left her panicked, she could not let whoever was on the other side of the door continue to beat on it until her sensei was knocked out of his prescribed bed rest.

At the door she froze, her heart suddenly sick on the fear that Kobayashi Hidemi might be on the other side of it, with her cat-eye glasses and her sweet, disarming smile, ready to cut out her sensei's heart with a gleaming scalpel and put it away in a pretty box tied with ribbons. If it was _that woman_, what would she say? What would she do? How could she get rid of her? She obviously meant to torment Himuro and disturb his rest. Would the doorman throw her out if Midori called for him? But if Himuro were roused in the commotion, would he let that woman be thrown out? Why had the doorman let her in in the first place? She had probably flashed some sort of official identification and said that she was his doctor or something similar -

Midori might have stood there for an infinite number of rapid, hysterical heartbeats, hypnotized by the random rhythm of thumps on the door, had not an irate voice shaken her out of her delirium.

"Rei'chi, lemme in," it demanded, and Midori realized with a start that it was not Kobayashi Hidemi on the other side of the door. Leaning close to it and peering out the little hole, she saw the shape of the man the voice had revealed and hastened to unlock and unlatch the door.

"Masuda-san!" she cried out, pitching her voice low so it would not carry down the hall to where Himuro Reiichi slept.

Midori was thankful that while Masuda had knocked on the door a number of times, he had not knocked particularly hard, so her sensei had not stirred despite the commotion. Masuda leaned idly against the door frame and looked down blankly at her.

"It's Reiichi's schoolgirl!" he exclaimed as the connection lit up his brain, and she made frantic hand signals for him to lower his voice, which he immediately imitated in an exaggerated fashion, pitching his voice to a stage whisper as he repeated his observation. "It's Reiichi's schoolgirl. I forgot you'd be here. Or I didn't think you'd really be here. I forget," he offered frankly, one hand behind his head as he scratched it thoughtfully.

"Masuda-san, are you all right?" she asked uncertainly, because she was not entirely sure he was leaning casually up against the door frame any more. He seemed _slumped _against it.

"I am not all right," he confessed earnestly to Midori, leaning down as if to get a better look at her. "I am unfortunately astonishingly drunk, for which I apologize. It is not something Reiichi's schoolgirl should have to see, but you are just going to have let me in, otherwise I'm going to have to sleep out here in the hallway by this plant." Here he toed the ornamental tree in the urn by the door with his foot.

When Masuda had leaned down to look at her, Midori had been nearly overwhelmed by the smell of whisky. It was reasonable, she reflected, that a bartender would end up smelling of alcohol, but Masuda currently didn't smell as if he mixed it and served it, he smelled as if he were some new and unusual liquor-dwelling sea creature. She looked at him, ineffectually propped up against the wall and sighed.

"Of course I won't make you sleep outside by the plant, Masuda-san," she said, moving to offer him her shoulder which he accepted gratefully. Fortunately, she had become accustomed to having full grown men lean on her due to the day's experiences, and managed to get him to the sofa without much incident. He threw himself back on the sofa tiredly, and she returned to lock and latch the door again.

Without being asked, she went into the kitchen to make a glass of ice water and returned to offer it to Masuda who looked upon her as if she were a goddess descended from heaven for his express benefit.

"Rei'chi doesn't know how good he's got it," confided Masuda quietly as he accepted the glass and drained half of it in one long swallow. "If I had it this good I'd already be wrapped around your little finger so hard you'd never get rid of me." He took another long swallow of water and then sat the glass down on the coffee table. "But then I guess Reiichi is anyway, so I guess that makes sense." He seemed to be thinking about something very seriously for some moments. "Did he really throw himself down the stairs today? Broke his wrist, banged up his hard head, all of that?"

Midori was forced to nod, wringing her hands a little awkwardly and utterly confirming his suspicions. "Yes, he really did throw himself down the stairs. He's got a mild concussion and a sprained wrist."

Masuda shook his head as Midori retreated to the kitchen to refill his water glass. When she returned he was already busy unlacing his shoes, which he kicked off and shoved away from the sofa. He accepted the water and then leaned back against the sofa again, moodily staring at the ice cubes as they clinked inside his glass.

Midori bit her lip a little uncertainly, unsure of what she ought to say to Masuda, who clearly had a lot of things on his mind. Her previous acquaintance with him had been necessarily brief. She knew he was her sensei's schoolmate and good friend, and that her conversations with him had been pleasant, if abbreviated. Himuro had always intervened whenever Masuda became chummy with her, reminding them both that he was simply her homeroom teacher, and that Masuda ought not act inappropriately toward a young girl who ought to be drinking lemonade, wearing white one-piece dresses trimmed in antique lace, and thinking of bunny rabbits hopping around in flower fields.

It was Masuda who broke the silence, sighing. "I don't know if I should happy that you exist, or depressed. You've made my life a lot more complicated. I'm happy because Reiichi is happy, because _you make him happy_, and he deserves to be happy, but she was as mad as a wild cat when she came in tonight. You should have seen her, or maybe it's really good that you didn't, because she was so drunk at the end of the night that she might have tried to shake you apart. She's not used to not getting her way, you know. I made sure she got home safely after we closed up, and you know she cried on me, then she threw up on me, because that's all I'm good for, right?" he laughed and it was a wry, painful sound, as if he were used to being hurt. "She never drinks like that. I tell you, she was angry, but more than that, she was scared. I hate to see her like that. That's why I'm not sure how to feel about you, schoolgirl. I ought to hate you for hurting her, but instead I end up hating myself, because at least when she's scared and upset she pays attention to me."

He had covered his eyes with one hand, the same way Himuro had done earlier when trying to shield his eyes from the light, although now the only light came from the lamp on the desk and the spillover from the kitchen. His mouth was curved into a strange sort of smile, the kind one smiles when facing down despair. Midori's mind was still spinning from the rambling monologue when he confessed,

"And I didn't mean to come here and tell you all of this. I came here to give Reiichi a piece of my mind, or maybe I didn't. I don't know. I just came to tell him that he shouldn't have done what he did, but he probably doesn't think that, because otherwise he wouldn't have done it. But he's out cold, isn't he?"

She had the presence of mind to answer the question, when it came. "He's sleeping," she corrected. "I have to wake him up in a couple of hours to make sure he's all right. He ought to be all right. It's just for safety's sake. He's had a long day. It's been very hard for him."

"I ought to have fallen for you," Masuda lamented, tipping his water glass back again. "Where were you eleven years ago? Right," he laughed humorlessly, "Probably still in diapers."

"In kindergarten," she corrected sympathetically.

Although she still could not say she had a complete picture of everything Masuda had inadvertently laid gracelessly into her lap, she was beginning to get the shape of things, she thought. In some ways, he seemed like a beaten dog, and this pulled at her heart. He had seemed so calm and mature and carefree when she had met him, in control of himself and of his situation, but now, she saw how helpless he seemed, just as helpless as Himuro had been when she had seen him throwing up uncontrollably. Being a grown man seemed every bit as complicated to her as being a high school girl. They were not men of steel. They were simply men.

"That figures," was all he said, as if he had resigned himself to his fate.

Masuda shrugged out of his jacket and threw it vaguely at the coffee table. It landed on the floor, but he simply shrugged and flopped sideways onto the sofa, his long legs dangling off one end. She knelt to retrieve his jacket, tiptoed quietly into Himuro's bedroom, where she checked to reassure herself that he was still sleeping easily, located a spare hanger in the closet, and then returned to find Masuda apparently already asleep. Midori hung his jacket near the sofa and then took the time to spread the blanket that she had laid out for herself over him. He didn't wake at this, but appeared to have found at least a measure of peace in sleep. She was unwilling to disturb him further, so she tiptoed to her little bag, retrieved her phone and its charger, turned off the light in the kitchen and then went to ponder her options at Himuro's desk.

Midori had, up until Masuda's unexpected arrival, intended to sleep on the sofa with the blanket and pillow she had laid out for herself. Frankly, barring the bed where her sensei slept, there weren't many other feasible locations. Himuro's apartment was sleek, modern, spacious, but _bare_. The sofa, the bed, and the desk chair where the only pieces of upholstered furniture in the apartment, and both the sofa and the bed were most decidedly occupied. She looked skeptically down at the desk chair but quickly ascertained that while it was very comfortable to sit in while doing one's homework, she did not think she would be able to sleep in it no matter how she tried to contort herself.

And then there was Masuda. If she did attempt to sleep in the desk chair, then she would be sleeping only a few feet away from a grown man that she didn't know particularly well. Although she had confidence in his strength of character and was not worried about her virtue, she felt that she ought to behave like a lady, and she was fairly certain a lady would select a more secluded place to sleep.

Not only that, but there were bed linens to consider. She had seen Himuro's anemic linen closet, had heard him confirm that he had only one set of linens for his bed, and one spare blanket that he had given to her for use on the couch. He had, it seemed, only what he deemed was necessary, and nothing spare besides. Although this was very precise, and very much in his character, she also thought it seemed rather lonely. It was as if he never expected to welcome guests into his home, or to receive a friend who called distraught, after hours. Now, due to a conflux of adversity, she knew that there were no other spare blankets or pillows to be had. She had given away what had been given to her, so now she must do without.

Well, that was all right. She had given Masuda her blanket because he had looked as if he had needed at least a little comfort. She was the sort of girl who would give away her last comfort if she thought there were another person in need. She was the sort of girl who has such a desire to look after others, that she really needs looking after herself. This element of her personality both captured Himuro and made him wish to throw up his hands in maddened frustration. If he had been awake at that moment, he would have marched over to Masuda, yanked away the offered blanket, and dumped it unceremoniously on Midori's head. If Masuda himself had been awake, he would have gracefully declined the offer of the blanket and traded her some believable yarn as to why he had no need of it. As it was, both men were sleeping soundly, so Midori had to puzzle her own way out of the situation she found herself in.

There were no rugs or mats to speak of in any of the rooms, and all the floors were either hardwood or tile. She had her robe that she could use as a pillow, and thought that Himuro probably would not mind if she used his much larger and longer robe as a blanket. These were the best bed linens she thought she could manage, and had decided to resign herself to them. Anyway, it did give her a reason to curl up in his robe, which she had wanted to do from the first moment she had seen it hanging there in the bathroom.

As for location, she did not think it would be proper for her to sleep in the front room near Masuda, and was not particularly confident in her ability to sleep in either the bathroom or the kitchen. That left only one possible location for her makeshift bed made of bathrobes: her sensei's bedroom.

Her sense of propriety told her that if she had to sleep in the room of a gentleman, then she ought to at least sleep in the room of the one she loved with all her heart. If someone had tried to advise her to the contrary, she would have thought them to have very confused morals. Besides, she knew her sensei, knew all about his rules and codes and laws, knew just how serious and decorous he was. She had mournfully already learned that if there was one man on the planet utterly devoted to protecting her chastity, then it was Himuro Reiichi.

She might as well have been sleeping in a room with a Mother Abbess, or St. Peter of the Pearly Gates himself.

So she quietly gathered her bathrobes and phone and softly padded down the hall to the partially closed bedroom door, slipped inside the room, and then arranged her robes in a far corner of the room, where she might see Himuro if she sat up in her little nest, but not while she was hunkered down. She plugged in her dead phone and waited until it powered on so she could set her first wakeup alarm in two hour's time, so that she could again check on Himuro's health.

Then, feeling very tired and very strange as she listened to his slow, even breathing, she curled up in his robe and tried her best to sleep.

* * *

><p>The two hours until the first alarm passed slowly at first, and Midori despaired that she would never get to sleep. The floor was very hard and Himuro's robe provided little more than psychological comfort. But despite all this, she was very tired, and although she could not say when she nodded off to sleep, the next thing she knew her phone was beeping urgently in her ear, and she felt very, very sore, as if every wrinkle and bump of the robe underneath her had been carved into her flesh.<p>

She scrambled to turn off the alarm, lest she disturb Himuro's slumber, but when she finally got it turned off, she realized how silly all of that was, since her whole intention was to wake him up to check on him.

Feeling the soreness in all her bones, she crawled on all fours to the bedside, then with some effort managed to push her aching body up onto it. She was _so very tired_.

Still. Still still still.

She had a job to do. He was depending on her.

Gently, she took hold of his shoulder and shook him.

"Reiichi," she murmured softly, "Reiichi, wake up."

"Mmm?" he answered her sleepily, only half awake himself.

"Do you feel all right?" she asked blankly, swaying a bit in place as she waited for his answer.

"Yes, I feel fine," he insisted into his pillow, "Now go to sleep."

"Are you sure?" she asked, already nodding again.

"_Sure_," was his only response, and then he was silent again.

Since he had insisted he was fine, it was probably all right for her to back to sleep. He had told her to go back to sleep after all, and she wanted very much to go back to sleep.

As she sat there on the bed, swaying slightly in the darkness, she thought, _This is a very soft bed._

Truthfully, it wasn't particularly soft at all, but as she had just been sleeping on a hardwood floor with no pillow or blanket, Himuro's bed seemed like paradise itself.

_I have to go back to my corner,_ she thought sleepily. _I mustn't disturb him._

Filled with a spirit of self-sacrifice and small despair, she crawled back down the bed, but then paused at the foot of it, right before she squirmed back onto the hard ground.

_I'll just rest here, _she thought. _I'll just rest here for a minute before I go back to my little corner, because it's so nice here. I'm sure he won't mind if I just rest a minute. I'm so tired._

And so, sore and exhausted, Yumeno Midori curled up in a little knot at the foot of the bed, and although she only meant to rest for a moment, she was soon fast asleep.

* * *

><p>Happy uh - <em>belated<em> - birthday, Himurochi.

Although this will be addressed in the next chapter, please be assured that Masuda has not been out driving Himuro's Maserati drunk XD. Drunk driving is not funny!


	5. All I Have to Do

**Just ****Another ****Word ****for**** '****You****'**

_Tokimeki __Memorial __Girl__'__s __Side __First __Love_

_Himuro __Reiichi __x __Heroine_

_**By **__**Gabihime **__**at **__**gmail **__**dot **__**com**_

_Part __Four__.__Five__: __All __I __Have __to __Do_

* * *

><p>Part I: Serve, Smash, Volley<p>

With his feet planted firmly just behind the baseline, as if he were a weathered stone that nothing between heaven and earth could induce to move, Himuro Reiichi eyed the small form across the court, doubled over with her hands on her knees, her racket gripped loosely in her left hand. Without any motion or sound of warning, his eyes narrowed and he rose suddenly to serve, his body curving seemingly effortlessly as he lifted the old wooden racket over his head and sent the ball whipping like a whirlwind toward the opposite court. Once across the net, the ball dropped like it was made of lead and spun so hard as it met the court that it might have left a mark on the paint before bouncing directly at her face.

Midori, although exhausted from running from sideline to sideline for hours chasing Himuro's viper quick serves, read the ball as it approached her like a fury. This was the Coach's nightmarish Kick Serve, which had knocked her out cold more than once. She shook the sweat from her face with a quick toss of her head at the same time as she stepped backward, twisting her body to get out of the way of the incoming ball's murderous bounce. She had read the ball right and got her racket under it in time, but the ball was heavy. The Coach's balls were always heavy, as if he had some arcane way of imparting them with extra mass.

It was almost too much for her backhand alone, and it would have been easier if she had tried to return it with a two-handed backhand, but the Coach had forbidden that. If she was to return it all, it had to be returned with the long, beautiful left-handed backhand.

Returning the Coach's Kick Serve was like catching a comet in a butterfly net, but somehow she did it, forcing all the will she had left in her body into the dozen muscles that felt like they were torn apart returning that ball.

She was still panting, the sweat dripping down the side of her face and into her shirt collar, struggling to find her footing again after her dancing to get behind the ball, when she felt something singing by her like a bullet. Her head turned automatically to follow it, whipping like she'd been slapped. The ball ground itself into the court again and then sprang up, ringing the cyclone fence behind them like a chorus of bells as it stuck momentarily before falling back to the earth like a star.

She looked back across the net at the coach in his nondescript black and grey tracksuit.

She did not think he had taken one step during their practice.

Midori dropped somewhat unceremoniously onto her bottom and then flopped backward onto the court like a dead thing. She lay there with her arms and legs spread out, as if she might have been making a snow angel, and felt the stored warmth of the court that they'd been playing on for hours. The Coach had a way of charging the ground up with latent energy, or perhaps that was just the sun.

Himuro approached the net slowly and deliberately and considered the number of balls he had served to her throughout their four hour practice. The court was littered with them, and they studded the ground like fluorescent dandelions. Looking down on her flushed face from over the barrier of the net, her exhaustion was palpable.

"All right, Yumeno. That's a satisfactory amount of service return practice for today. Go clean yourself up and then we'll talk about today's performance."

The girl in the rumpled pink tennis dress nodded slowly, and then commenced to wriggle to her feet like an inchworm, flashing a long and unexpected view of her panties in the process. He turned away immediately and regarded the sky.

"Perhaps it might rain," he observed.

There wasn't a cloud to be seen.

* * *

><p>Himuro was sitting in an old wooden chair in the hallway near the dressing rooms, carefully going through a training log filled with cramped notations, when he heard a blood-curdling yelp. Such a yelp could only come from the throat of his protégé, who might be elegant and powerful on the court, but was often a clumsy disaster in her regular life. Himuro had become familiar with this sound as the hallmark of calamities both great and small, and without a second thought he was on his feet and through the door of the girl's dressing room.<p>

This late in the day on a Saturday the dressing room was empty except for Yumeno Midori, who sat helplessly on her bottom on the floor, thankfully clothed. Her locker was open in front of her, and her shoes were in disarray on the ground. One of them lay on its side, and two glimmering tacks had tumbled out of it like buried treasures.

On the bottom of her socked right foot, a red stain was spreading.

She looked as if she were about to burst into tears, not from the pain, which was probably not much compared to the muscle aches she experienced regularly from his brutal training, but simply because she was overwrought and exhausted, a good-natured girl who had no idea how to properly respond to bullying. Himuro frowned almost imperceptibly. This girl who was such a prodigy on the court was really hapless when left to her own devices. To bully her was like tying a firecracker to the tail of a small, three-legged kitten.

"No," he said deliberately in response to her trembling lower lip. "Tears are forbidden," he declared.

She sniffled alarmingly in response, but he was gratified to see her marshaling herself and struggling not to cry. At last she nodded resolutely, her mouth set in a determined line that was somehow incongruous with her continued sniffling.

"Now," he said, satisfied that she was no longer in danger of dissolving into pitiful wailing, "We will see to your injury."

And without further warning, Himuro Reiichi bent down and scooped her up as if she might have really been a kitten, and leaving her shoes behind, made for the auxiliary medical room that was in the gymnasium.

"Coach," Midori was squeaking in distress, her cheeks blooming a rosy pink, "It's all right. You don't have to carry me. I can walk!"

"I wouldn't advise it," he said shortly. "Even a small puncture wound can become troublesome if it gets infected."

"But Coach, I don't want to put any strain on your knee - "

His knee, it was the injury that had put an early end to his promising professional career. Even now he walked a little more slowly than he might have. It wasn't obvious to most people, but this girl was astute, and she had watched him for a long time. He limped.

"My knee," he said, "Is not your concern. Worry about your own knees and your own feet. I think you will discover that your tennis is very disappointing if you can't move around the court the way you want to."

"_Coach_," that one word response was a little melancholic, filled with worry, and a mild indictment. She used that one word dozens of times each day, to say dozens of different things. He thought she had finished speaking her piece, because often that was all she said to him, just 'Coach,' like it was the only word she knew, but then she surprised him, because she kept on going shyly. "I just feel like I ought to worry about you. You spend so much time worrying about me, it seems like the least I can do."

"The least you can do," he answered with a short grunt, "Is to get better at tennis."

* * *

><p>At special training camp that summer she ran further, jumped higher, and lifted more weights than any of the other players, including the other regulars on the girls' tennis team. Himuro devised a special training regimen for her that was more challenging even than the one for the regulars on the boys' tennis team, and was pleased when she beat one of the better regular boy players in straight sets after she was challenged.<p>

Still, he could tell she was tired and somewhat discouraged. His training schedule was brutal, but worse than that, it was lonely. She did not train with the other girls. She did not even train with the other boys. None of the girls sat with her when they went to eat together in the cafeteria, and Himuro always ate his food alone in his room, unwilling to fraternize with the players.

But one boy, the dark-haired star of the boys' tennis team, Suzuka Kazuma, had noticed her loneliness and her wavering resolve. He had seen them talking and laughing together the night previous, long after lights out, sitting under the bright lights of a tennis court amid a sea of loose yellow balls. Midori had been laughing like a little girl, waving her arms around while she narrated a story, likely the memory of one her catastrophic accidents, which were only funny in hindsight.

He did not ever find them funny, and so he never laughed at them.

But the handsome sun-bronzed Suzuka laughed like an idiot, throwing his head back and showing all of his teeth.

Himuro simply stood back in the shadows quietly and observed.

* * *

><p>The next day, after her grueling run, but before service return practice, during the time usually allotted for lunch, he called her to his room to have a very serious conference with her.<p>

They both sat together on his floor laid with tatami mats and he could not help but notice a glow in her cheeks that had not been there the day before.

_I __hope __that __I __caught __this __dangerous __situation __in __time__,_ Himuro thought, his mouth turned down at the corners. _No__. __I __know __this __girl__. __I __know __her __tennis__. __She __will __not __disappoint __me__._

Midori's stomach growled loudly, and he uncovered the plate of sandwiches that stood between them and pushed them toward her.

She needed no further invitation and was soon happily munching on a sandwich and looking blissful, although this fare was nothing extraordinary: cucumber and celery sandwiches, something he was always feeding her to get her into condition.

In fact, she seemed so perfectly content to sit across from him and gobble up a whole plate of celery and cucumber sandwiches that the entire lunch period might have passed that way, had he not broken the silence between them.

"Yumeno," he began seriously, using his best disciplinarian voice. "You broke curfew last night."

It was as if Midori had frozen on an atomic level, the sandwich triangle halfway to her mouth. She sat there, completely immobile, as if she had become a very lifelike statue of a high school tennis player.

Himuro frowned, and continued. "This afternoon, you will have additional repetitions of both sit-ups and push-ups as punishment for this infraction of training camp rules."

At this pronouncement, Midori seemed to relax at last, coming to life again, apparently relieved, as if she had feared a much worse punishment.

"Coach," she answered penitently, "I'm very sorry. I know I shouldn't have been out so late - "

"Yumeno," he cut her off, because he was not yet finished indicting her. "I was hoping we would not have to have this conversation, but it is better that we have it now than wait until it is too late." He paused and let this warning sink into her skin before taking a deep breath and speaking low and with unwavering resolve. "_Love __is __forbidden__._"

The girl looked as if he had struck her, her face turning first pink, then red, then purple, her eyes wide with what might have been tears standing in the corners of them.

He had meant to give her a short, sharp, shock, and he had done so. It was best to act now while she was still vulnerable from the blow and likely to listen to his advice.

"Yumeno, you swore to me that you were willing to work as hard as necessary to reach the world stage," he began slowly, reminding her first of the vow they had taken together on an empty tennis court, as the snow fell. "If you want to follow the path of tennis, there is no way you can follow the path of love. It may seem cruel, but there is no room in your life for a man. To be competitive on the world stage," here he lowered his voice even further, and it came out gritty and ominous, "_you __have __no __conception __of the __hardships __you__'__ll __have __to __face__._ It will make these days seem like an easy fairy tale. No romance could withstand such pressure. Either you will break, or it will break, and either way, your tennis will suffer. If you want to compete on the world stage, you must be willing _to __give __your __life __to __tennis__._"

As he had been speaking, low and deliberate and direct, she had begun to recover, and the purple despair was leaving her face in favor of the rosiness of her earlier elation over the sandwiches, and he knew he had to act quickly if he was to make her understand, because she had already begun to wriggle in place. She was ready to interject, but he would not let her.

"You must understand," he said, keeping his voice firm and even, trying hard to control the emotion that was building in his chest. "When you swore to me you were willing to go as far as you could, you took my hand. You put your trust in me. You put your trust in the belief that I would be capable of pushing you and your tennis into the future. The world deserves to see your tennis, but it never will if you let yourself be distracted by _anything_. If you let a man take your hand, he will want to pull you toward him, and that will pull you away from tennis. _I __will __never __let __go __of __you__. __Tennis __will __never __let __go __of __you__._ So you must decide whether you will let go of him, or find yourself pulled apart."

After having delivered this terrifying ultimatum, Himuro expected her to be quailing where she sat, but instead she seemed ready to burst, leaning forward, her cheeks rosy, and there were still small tears in the corners of her eyes.

"_Coach_," she exploded like a firecracker, scattering her nervous enthusiasm around the room like confetti, "But what if," she leaned forward further, over the plate of cucumber and celery sandwiches, "What if ," she took a deep breath and then let out all her pent up feelings in a dizzying shout, "What if the man I love _is __you__? _Then I don't have to be pulled in two directions, _just __in __one__._"

Across the plate of cucumber and celery sandwiches, Coach Himuro Reiichi said nothing, and they sat there staring at one another, Midori panting as if she'd just run up a dozen flights of stairs, her face glowing with triumph because she'd finally said what she'd meant to say.

Himuro Reiichi said nothing, and simply stood, and silently left the room.

* * *

><p>He could think of no other way to deal with such an unexpected development than to simply run away from it. He had never expected that his star player, so carefully nurtured and raised, might look with warm eyes toward him. He was accustomed to shutting people out of his life. He was dour, he was mostly silent, he was unfriendly and forbidding, and outside of tennis even he had to admit that he was very boring.<p>

He had no idea what it was that she wanted from him, and was terrified to find out.

He had planned everything out carefully, had copious notes covering the next several years: what she ought to eat, when she ought to exercise, what she ought to wear, when to begin developing her rising shot, what type of speed training would be best to improve her reflexes, whether he thought she was drinking enough milk, or ought to have more soy in her diet come next March. He was sure that he had prepared for every eventuality, considered each problem carefully, and devised solutions to all of them.

But this -

This -

He had no idea what to do with this.

And so he walked.

He walked and he walked and he walked.

He walked for hours, in methodical circles along the training camp's running trail, around the tennis courts, filled with players practicing through the afternoon and into the evening, when the dinner bell rang, and finally he sat in the dark on an empty tennis court and looked up at the stars.

It was very late when he at last went back to his room, long after curfew had been called, so he knew he would be safe from an awkward encounter with Yumeno Midori.

The best thing to do, he had decided, was to pretend that her outburst had never happened. If she brought it up, he would studiously ignore it.

He was good at ignoring things, like the knee that now ached from so much walking.

He slid the door open silently, and then closed it behind him, prepared to strip off his warmup suit and pour himself a drink.

But there on the floor, was something he had not expected to see.

She was flopped over on her side, sound asleep, her arms wrapped around a familiar object that he immediately recognized as his tennis racket. She was sleeping with her face pressed against the strings.

Beside her, carefully covered, was the plate of cucumber and celery sandwiches. She had eaten exactly half of them, although he could hear her stomach growling even as she slept.

He sighed.

He would have to have his racket restrung.

* * *

><p>Over the next few months, things were much the same as they had ever been, although they were a little different as well. Sometimes his hand lingered on her back as he corrected her posture. Sometimes they sat together after practice and shared the cucumber and celery sandwiches that she had learned to make.<p>

When Suzuka Kazama intruded on Midori's training, Himuro chased him off the courts, and Midori only shrugged in sheepish apology at the star tennis player.

Her form improved. Her endurance improved. Her will grew even stronger.

It was as if someone had lit a flame deep in her chest.

And the National Tournament approached.

Through the common black magic of a school girl's charms, Yumeno Midori secured a promise from him.

After the Nationals were over, he would give her a kiss, her first kiss.

It seemed to him, these days, that she hit a lot of aces.

* * *

><p>And there she stood, like a queen crowned in laurels, having bested the most talented players in the nation to rightly claim the title of best girl's singles player. Habataki Gakuen had won national accolades, and it seemed like flower petals rained down from the sky on her as the crowd enthusiastically cheered for their fresh-faced idol, the girl who had shown them tennis worthy of the world stage.<p>

She crossed the court to shake hands with her opponent and he could see that she was crying, crying with happiness, and with relief. And then she turned and smiled, and he knew that here in her moment of triumph, she smiled for him, that she smiled for the both of them.

He watched her as she crossed the court, and knew in his heart who she was coming home to.

But then she was running, her mouth open and her terror very real, and he had no idea why, why now, at this moment, when the world was ready to open up before her, did she look _so afraid_.

And then he saw that there was a tall figure lying on the ground, very pale and very still.

And then he realized that the body on the ground was the body of Himuro Reiichi, that he had chosen this particular moment to die of a massive heart attack. He was dead by the time she got to him, had crumpled up like crepe paper in the rain, so she didn't even have a chance to share any final sweet words with him.

It was very tragic, and her bitter tears watered the hard ground of the tennis court that day.

_Wait__,_ Himuro thought, as he stood there watching Midori weep piteously over his dead body, _I __didn__'__t __have __a __heart __condition__, __I __had __a __knee __injury__. __Why __did __I __just __drop __dead__?_

"It's the most appropriate way for this story to end,"explained his dead body. "This way we aren't here to hold her back."

"I'm not really that concerned about holding her back any more," Himuro protested, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Besides, isn't killing me off a little extreme?"

"I don't like this ending either," interjected Midori, halting her sobs over her coach's dead body long enough to voice her own thoughts. "I think we ought to get married instead."

"_We__'__re __not __interested __in __your __opinion_," Himuro and his corpse were this time in perfect agreement.

* * *

><p>Part II: The Deep, Still Night<p>

The cold, wet night air was perhaps the only thing that was keeping Midori awake at this hour. She had just had an exhausting day: first in classes at the university, and then in observation at the hospital. Her feet ached from standing so long, and her mind was numb from all the information she had tried to cram into it this week.

As she plodded along in the driving rain, she could not help but reflect that although she knew she would be glad to see her bed again, it was depressing to come home to a cold, empty apartment. She didn't even have a cat to greet her, because the lease forbid it. For Midori, who was used to a warm home filled with noise and activity, the solitude was perhaps the worst trial of all.

And this was the reason, maybe, that she was willing to spend such long hours at the library studying, or working in the labs, or tagging along on floor rounds like an abandoned puppy. Although it was exhausting, it saved her from the emptiness of dark, lonely rooms.

She lived on the second floor of an old building that had an exterior staircase, and she was in the habit of getting the house keys out of her purse before climbing the stairs. The light above her door was inoperable and apparently beyond repair, and although she had asked the landlord to replace it many times, he had so far taken no steps other than to reassure her that it would _eventually _be replaced.

She paused on the lowest step of the metal staircase and sorted through her keys. Behind her, in the alley that ran next to the old building, she heard a rustling, as if a cat was among the garbage bins.

It was not unusual to hear stray cats in the alley, but Midori was the sort of girl who gives until her pockets are empty, so she resolved to bring down a saucer of milk for the alley scavenger. Having found her key, she was about to begin climbing the stairs to fetch the saucer of milk when she heard another sound, a sound that made her turn on her heel and charge heedlessly into the dark alley.

It was a low, quiet moan. It was the kind of moan that only comes from the throat of a human being who has been pursued by pain and horrors through exhaustion until complete and utter collapse. She had heard that moan before, in the emergency room, or in the wards of the hospital with terminal patients.

The alley was very dark. Not even the feeble light from the street penetrated the shadows, so Midori was forced to fish in her bag for the small flashlight she carried in case of emergencies. This was clearly an emergency. As she swept it slowly over the ground and the walls of the alley, she never worried that what she found might be dangerous to find. She did not worry about this because she never worried about such things. It was perhaps not bravery. It was not a lack of fear, because sometimes she was quite afraid of the dark, or things like ghosts, or boogeymen. It was simply a lack of forethought. She charged ahead into situations regardless of consequences. One of her nicknames at the hospital was "the stupid girl."

Against a wall, between two rubbish bins, she found him. He was all curled up on himself, his long limbs bent as if to shield himself from further harm. He was dirty and harried and bleeding and barely conscious.

She was down on her knees in an instant, the flashlight clenched in her teeth to light the scene as her hands moved like swift water, tracing over his body to grasp the state of his injuries. In her hand was the small utility knife that she kept in her purse, and she used it to cut away the crimson stained fabric of his shirt over the worst injury. He had a gunshot wound in his upper right chest. The wound had bled quite a bit, but she thought the bullet had clipped him, not become embedded in the flesh. The wound was clean, and the bleeding had mostly stopped. She didn't think any bones were shattered. She was sure his ankle was sprained, but she didn't think it was broken.

She discovered something else during her examination as well. He was wearing a shoulder holster, and there was a heavy side arm pressed against his body. She wasn't familiar enough with handguns to have identified what kind it was, but as her fingers brushed against the steel she could feel that it was subtly warm, although whether this was from the feverish heat of his body or because it had been fired recently, she could not say.

She bit her lip and then shook her head, returning her attention to her patient. He could be moved safely, she thought. He had to be moved from the alley, in any case.

"It's all right," she murmured to him as she gently grabbed him around the middle and began to slowly drag him toward the stairs to her apartment.

As she pulled him along, his eyelids fluttered open and he spoke suddenly, in a low, hoarse voice.

"No," he insisted sharply. "Leave me."

"I can't just leave you," she protested, continuing to tug him along. "You obviously need medical attention. You've been shot. I'm going to get you upstairs and then I'm going to call an ambulance."

"Not an ambulance," he barked, and she wondered if he was hallucinating. "Not the police. Don't call _anyone_. Leave me."

She was spared further argument because he lapsed back into semi-consciousness, and she silently struggled with him until she got him to the bottom of the stairs.

He was tall, nearly 190 centimeters, she estimated, and she was short. Sometimes at the hospital they called her "the short idiot girl." She was short, but she was determined. Mustering all her will, she heaved the injured man onto her back, staggering under the weight, and then began the long, slow climb of eighteen endless steps up to her apartment door.

He needed her help. There was nothing else to do but provide it, whether he wanted it or not.

* * *

><p>The pale fingers of dawn were just creeping across the sky when he at last regained consciousness. She had stripped him down to his trousers and dressed the wound on his shoulder and bound his sprained foot before leaving him to sleep on her bed. He was beyond exhaustion and slept despite the fact that she had no pain medication to give him.<p>

Because he had insisted - perhaps in a delirium - she had not called an ambulance. His wounds, although serious enough, were such that she could treat them with the first aid kit she kept under the sink. The worst was the gunshot wound, but it had fortunately only done surface damage. Other than that, he had a number of minor bruises and lacerations, as if he had run hard and run long, or been in a lot of fights.

She had sat on the floor beside his bedside during the long, quiet night, monitoring his breathing. If he had taken a critical turn, she would have called an ambulance immediately, no matter what he had told her. Even if he was in some kind of trouble, it was better to be alive than to be dead.

As she sat next to him, passing the time by counting the faded marks of old scars on his body, she sometimes let her gaze wander to his face. He had come to her wearing glasses, glasses that were somehow miraculously not broken, despite his terrible adventures. They lay on the bedside table now while he slept the sleep of the dead. It was a face that might have been hard, a face that she had a hard time imagining smiling. It was a face marred by worry and pain.

She wondered what color his eyes were. She hadn't been able to tell in the darkness of the alley, even with the aid of the flashlight.

The gun, still in its shoulder holster, lay beside his glasses on the bedside table. She hadn't known what to do with it, but she had had to take it off of him to treat him.

Midori sat on her bottom with her arms clasped around her knees and wondered what kind of man he was.

When he awoke, it was slow at first, as he groggily looked around himself in an attempt to understand where he was, but then it was if an electric current had passed through him. He sat straight up and swiped his glasses off the table, and before she could say a word he was on his feet. He stumbled once, feeling his ankle twist under him, but then he steadied and set his teeth.

"What time is it? How long have I been here?" he asked, low and quiet and serious, running one hand through his hair to push it out of his face as he cast about for his shoes. He located them without her assistance, and had sat to lace them before she could respond.

She glanced at the clock on the wall, her teeth grazing her lower lip as she answered, "It's around six in the morning. You've been here around four hours, I guess."

"Four hours," he said lowly, and then he swore.

She got to her feet and wrung her hands, "You really shouldn't put too much weight on that ankle," she cautioned. "Without x-rays I can't be absolutely sure it's not fractured."

He ignored her and stood again, grabbing the shoulder holster and handgun from the bedside table, and then seemed to be looking for his shirt.

"Ah," Midori flushed, raising her palms up in a sign of guilt, "I had to cut it off of you to treat your shoulder wound."

The tall man frowned and seemed to be about to say something when he turned his face sharply, as if listening, and then time seemed to slow down for her as she heard a strange clicking sound she had never heard before, and then she was on the ground and he was on top of her as the morning exploded around her. The room seemed shaken by an unseen wind that shattered picture frames, splintered wood, and left holes in the walls and doors. It was only at this moment that Midori realized that the rain and thunder and whirlwind had been gunshots.

The taller man was already on his hands and knees, with one arm around her middle, dragging her along with him to the bathroom.

He pushed her up on top of the sink and said, "Open the window. As fast as you can, open the window and crawl out of it."

"But there isn't a balcony out there, only a ledge," she protested, even as she struggled to undo the latch and push the window open.

He was sitting on the bathroom floor, his back pressed against the wall, and in one brief glance over her shoulder she saw him load a clip into the bottom of his gun in a smooth, brief motion. It was beautiful.

Then he leaned around the corner and fired several shots rapidly.

Later, he would explain to her that such an action was suppressive fire, not meant to actually cause any casualties, just impede the progress of their enemies and buy a little time.

"It doesn't matter if you have to jump," he spoke coolly, between gritted teeth, "It's a choice between a certain death here and a possible death out the window."

It was a point well taken. Midori shoved the window open and climbed out onto the ledge, and the cold morning drizzle had soon wet her pajamas so that they stuck to her. The tall man squeezed out the small bathroom window after her, and looking down below them, seemed to carefully consider the layout of the alley before looping his arm around her waist again.

It was a choice between certain death and an uncertain one.

They jumped.

* * *

><p>The next few hours were a rabbit run across the city, with the tall man dragging her along behind him. The drizzle and the morning fog gave them some cover, but her slippers were trod to ribbons and she at last left them behind to go barefoot. He frowned at that, but said nothing. There was nothing else to do. They were pursued.<p>

They ran.

* * *

><p>After what seemed like an endless chase through the foggy, tangled maze of the city, he was at last assured that they had lost their hunters and so, limping, he led her to a place of safety.<p>

It was the basement of an apparently abandoned building.

He flipped a switch and she was gratified to find that at least a few scattered bulbs flickered to life. The building might be abandoned, but at least it had electricity.

Without a word, he dragged her over to a worn out armchair and pushed her down into it. Then he pulled a pair of handcuffs out and cuffed her ankle unceremoniously to the chair.

This accomplished, he sighed audibly and sank to the floor where he sat, his arms crossed over his knees, and stared at her grimly.

"Um," she began haltingly, because her wet pajamas were still clinging to her, and her feet were cut and dirty from their long flight across the city. She had simply done as she was told, and been dragged along for hours now, because they had been running for their lives. But now she was handcuffed to a chair.

It was perhaps not the best development.

"It's nothing personal," he said simply. "It's for your own safety. I can't let you go. They'll kill you. That's why I told you to leave me where I was."

Midori bit her lip and asked, "Who'll kill me? Who's trying to kill you?"

The tall man shrugged as he got to his feet, as if having the information wouldn't do her much good.

"The White Crow," he said simply. "A yakuza boss."

She shivered in her wet pajamas and huddled up, drawing one leg to her chest and wrapping her arms around it. She couldn't draw both legs up because one of her ankles was handcuffed to a chair.

The tall man with hair the color of sunset deepening to night brought her a basket with bandages and antiseptic in it.

"Clean yourself up," he said.

* * *

><p>It was perhaps surprising how quickly Midori became acclimated to her new life of being handcuffed to an armchair, although she didn't stay handcuffed for all that long. As if he realized that handcuffing her to a chair could not really be a long-term solution, he brought a length of chain and padlocked one end to a leather cuff around her ankle and the other end to the wall.<p>

He told her his name when she asked the same way he had told her the name of the White Crow: in short, clipped syllables, completely devoid of emotion. He didn't appear to be interested in her name, although she volunteered it. He usually referred to her as only as "hey you."

She thanked him for his courtesy, because he had made sure that the chain was long enough for her to visit the bathroom and sleep on a narrow cot in one corner.

He had frowned at that and said, "You're a very strange girl."

It was one of the other nicknames they had given her at the hospital.

The very strange girl.

* * *

><p>He was often gone at all times of the day and night, and she became accustomed to patching him up when he came staggering in. He was never in as bad a shape as he had been the first night she had met him, but he often gave her a run for her money, and she wondered what it was that he was up to that left him in such a state, but she never asked.<p>

She thought he appreciated it, the fact that she never asked, but she wasn't sure.

One day, while going through a pile of cardboard boxes that lay forgotten in one corner of the basement, she found something that made her heart flutter, and she had soon clasped it to her heart and run to the end of her chain to exhibit it to him.

"Ah, Reiichi, I'm so happy," she had confessed, a rosy flush spreading across her cheeks, "You're a policeman!"

The photo was off a young, bright, serious looking Himuro Reiichi, standing next to another cadet with curly brown hair. They were both wearing crisp looking uniforms, although the other cadet took away some of the decorum of the photograph by hanging his arm around Himuro's neck and flashing a victory sign.

Himuro, who was sitting in the old armchair that she had originally been handcuffed to and trying to read, looked up when she brought the photograph over, and his face softened momentarily.

"Why are you happy that I'm a policeman?" he asked quietly, and he seemed very tired.

"Because I was worried that you were a criminal," she volunteered enthusiastically, still admiring how he looked then, so clean and serious and moved with the spirit of his responsibilities.

"I _am _a criminal," Himuro responded dryly. "I was suspended from service. I used to be a police inspector, but now I'm not anything, not anything sanctioned by the law. But I can't leave the White Crow alone." He gestured idly to the handgun that lay on the side table close at hand. "I don't even have a license for that gun." He paused and considered her. "Do you think a normal police inspector would keep a girl chained up to a wall in a basement for over a month?"

She thought about it.

He shook his head. "Don't answer that."

"Why are you so focused on the White Crow?" she asked quietly, the photograph still clasped to her chest.

"He's killed a lot of people, both directly and indirectly," Himuro said slowly.

"Did he kill this person?" she asked softly, her hands folded over the photograph.

Himuro looked away, and she knew the answer from the pain that flashed across his face.

"They say that when you start out for revenge, you dig two graves," she spoke tentatively. Her feet were cold on the cement of the basement floor.

When he turned to look at her, his eyes burned emerald fire, like flame lit over boron. "I'm not interested in revenge," he said. "I'm interested in _justice_."

* * *

><p>It was a late spring night when he finally turned the keys in the padlocks and let her loose from the ankle restraint. He pressed a ticket and a passport into her hands.<p>

"I'm sorry," he said shortly, never one for long speeches or effusive sentiment. "Be on this boat when it sails. I wish," he turned away from her and gave her his back as he finished quietly, "I wish it could have been different."

"You're going for the White Crow tonight, aren't you?" Midori's voice was soft, although she couldn't hide the tears that were building in her heart.

He didn't answer her directly, only said, "There's a little money to get you started in that envelope. I'm sorry I got you involved in this. If I fail, then they'll come here, tonight. You must be on that boat when it sails." He brushed his hand across his forehead, pushing the hair out of his face. "I've run out of time. I'm sorry."

It was her turn to steel herself, quietly and calmly, to choke the tears off, and to stand resolute.

"I won't run," she said simply.

He wheeled to face her then, his frown severe, and she could hear the anger in his voice. He was not used to being defied. "_You will be on that boat_."

"I won't," she answered calmly, and found it wasn't terribly hard to stand up to him at all. "I'll be right here, waiting for you to come home."

"You will be on that boat if I have to drag you there myself," he had raised his voice, something she had never heard him do. He stepped closer to her, an attempt to intimidate her into compliance with the use of his considerable height.

She put her hands on her hips and stared him down. "Even if you put me there, I'll just come back here to wait."

"Midori, you stupid, stubborn girl - " Himuro growled, his large palms gripped her shoulders to give her a hard shake, but then she was crying, she was crying and she had wrapped her arms around his waist and was laughing at the same time.

"Reiichi, Reiichi," she laughed as she cried into his shirt front, "That's the first time you've said my name. It's the first time you've said 'Midori.'"

Taken totally aback by this sudden embrace, Himuro's defenses were felled, and he awkwardly patted her head. She held onto him for a long time, crying and hiccuping, but at last she let him go, giving him a last, strong squeeze.

As she stood back and wiped her hands across her eyes, she smiled.

"I'm going to wait right here, Reiichi," she repeated resolutely, and it was as if she had written her decision across the wall in her own blood. "Because I love you."

He covered his face with his hands, pushing his glasses up with his fingertips as he did so.

"I don't want them to kill you," he spoke quietly, the emotion in his voice strangled and tight.

She put her hand lightly on his shoulder and squeezed it. "Then don't let them. This is something you have to do, right? For justice, not for revenge. Bring the White Crow to the police station in handcuffs." She frowned briefly. "I won't let you go to die."

He held her then, as tightly as he could, as if he would break her into pieces and then hide them where they couldn't be found. Then he leaned down and brushed his lips against her forehead before stepping back.

"You're strong," he said slowly, as he looked at her, standing so short she might easily be mistaken for a middle school student. "Stronger than I am."

She smiled at that and wrapped her arms around herself.

"I have to be," she said. "I carried you all this way, didn't I?"

He laughed then, a strange laugh that she had never heard before, the first laugh that he had ever let her see, and then let his broad hand come to rest on her head.

* * *

><p>Part III: Kimi ni todoketai omoi wa hitotsu  Wanting My Heart to Reach Yours

"He's coming to now, MASU-san," Midori chirped happily, peering into the open coffin.

Masuda flicked his cigarette ash onto the thick carpet, disregarding the disapproving look of the priest in attendance as he shrugged, "He'd better, considering how much we had to shell out to the church." He tapped the side of the coffin lightly with his foot. "REI, are you alive yet?"

At this summons, the third member of their party sat up groggily from the coffin. His hair was mussed and falling into his face, and his glasses hung on by only one ear. Still, despite all this, he no longer appeared dead.

"Keep your voice down, MASU," the former corpse answered slowly, his eyes scrunched closed as he straightened his glasses and tried to push his hair back into place using only his fingers. "I've got a terrible headache."

Masuda shrugged again and waved a hand lightly as if he was not particularly surprised. "That figures. You did let a goblin hit you right between the eyes with a spiked club."

With his glasses back in place and his hair brushed mostly out of his eyes, the man in the coffin seemed to finally become aware of his surroundings. He frowned at the coffin he was still sitting in.

"We did not obtain the Dragon Pearl?" he asked, although his tone made it clear that he already knew the answer to his question.

"Of course we didn't," Masuda said, rolling his eyes. "When you went out like a light, MIDO-chan and I had no other options but to lug your body all the way back through the Volcanic Cave, over the Wild Plains, and back to Castillian Town to the church, and believe me, REI, these guys aren't running a charity operation."

The priest in attendance gave Masuda a sardonic smile before returning to looking holy.

Himuro pushed his glasses up his nose with two fingers and then crawled out of the coffin, which promptly vanished. On his feet again and looking more in possession of himself, he cleared his throat. "Of course I appreciate your efforts on my behalf. It is inevitable that I sometimes fall in battle, being that mage classes are not suited to soaking damage."

"Which is why you shouldn't do things like try to cover MIDO-chan," Masuda grunted. "She's got more hit points than you do and better defense. There's a reason you're supposed to stay on the back line, REI. You're built like a house made out of matchsticks."

"REI-san can't really help it though, interjected Midori, who had gotten to her feet from where she had knelt beside the coffin, attending Himuro on his most recent deathbed. With nimble fingers she brought up Himuro's status screen to display to the both of them, "He's got the permanent 'TRUE LOVE' status, so he always acts to cover me, whether it's a good idea or not."

Himuro was mortified to have his status screen displayed so genially without his permission, as if Midori had chosen to exhibit his underwear to the public at large, and with a flurry of sputtering and fast fingers, he dismissed the window. It didn't matter to Masuda one way or another whether Himuro was suffering from True Love or Insanity. The status effects seemed similar in his opinion.

"It seems like every time we're about to get ahead in terms of having a little jingle in our pockets, REI goes and checks himself into the coroner's office," Masuda cast a vague look at the priest, "Sorry, the Holy Church, and we say goodbye to all our gold."

"I would like to remind you, MASU, that we spend the bulk of the money we acquire on equipment and healing items that are for your use almost exclusively," Himuro shot back.

"That's because I'm the vanguard, REI. If you'd like to try being the vanguard and see how long you last on the front lines wearing your big purple dress and hitting goblins with your broomstick, then you can be my guest," Masuda answered nonchalantly, waving Himuro idly off.

The girl in the feathered velvet cap fluttered her hands as she got between them. Normally the two of them were the best of friends: long-time party members, companions devoted to one another's welfare and best interests, experienced, level-headed adventurers used to the give-and-take of monster hunting and questing. They had a long standing reputation of being an excellent duo.

But every once in awhile they got like this and fought like children. Such fights usually ended up in them both sullenly pouting. She tried her best to defuse these situations when she could.

"REI-san, MASU-san, please don't fight," she began in her best conciliatory manner, "MASU-san, you know that REI-san appreciates the risks you take on the front line, and MASU-san, I know you know that REI-san doesn't keep getting himself killed on purpose."

She felt Himuro glowering behind her and scrambled to amend her statement, "I mean, REI-san has the least hit points out of all of us, so it's reasonable that he's the one most likely to end up in a coffin. MASU-san, you can't think that REI-san appreciates being dead all the time, do you? It's very difficult for him, I'm sure. I hate being dead, and I know you must hate it too. Just think how REI-san must feel."

At last Masuda threw up his hands in defeat, "I admit," he said, "I doubt he likes it. I think what we should concentrate on is coming up with a strategy that minimizes the time REI spends dead."

"I think we can all agree on that," Himuro conceded drily.

Having paid the priest his butcher's fee, the three of them left the Church, still discussing the problem.

"We don't have any Golden Apples, so we can't increase his hit points, therefore the easiest way to make REI-san more survivable is by increasing his defensive rating," Midori suggested sensibly, her head bobbing as she walked between the two taller adventurers.

"The only snag there is that mages can only wear dresses, which don't have the greatest defensive rating," Masuda said, ruthlessly pointing out the reason that Himuro's defensive score was so pitifully low. As a rogue, he could equip most weapons and armor, save the heaviest class four armors that only knights and heroes could equip.

"I do not wear dresses," Himuro interjected seriously, although his nerves were obviously worn a little thin from his recent encounter with the afterlife, "I wear robes."

Masuda eyed Himuro's sweeping purple habit sidelong and said only, "That's a matter of opinion."

Midori laughed nervously in an attempt to keep them from further baiting one another and made another suggestion.

"I know a lot of the mage armors are a little weak defensively, but some of them are enchanted and provide special benefits," she said. "We should check the bazaar and see if any unusual robes have come in lately. We might find something that'll do the trick."

Neither of them had an objection to this course of action, although Masuda found it pertinent to point out the sorry state of their purse.

Midori merely winked at him and reminded, "It never hurts to look."

* * *

><p>At Castillian's Grand Bazaar you could always find a little bit of everything. There were stalls selling radishes and garlic right next to the stalls of alchemists who sold potions that held the secret to eternal youth.<p>

As Midori had suggested, after only a little searching, they turned up a piece of armor that really seemed tailor made to their needs. The was a problem however. Said robes were baby pink and had sequins and spangles sewn into them, were adorned at the neck with a ribbon and pom poms, and had frills along the bottom hem.

"It's called the Radiant Robe," Midori announced, reading the item information window she'd called up. "It'll double your current defensive rating, REI-san."

"Absolutely not," Himuro denied, throwing his arm out to slice the air decisively.

"Aren't you concerned about the party's well being, REI-san?" Masuda gently needled. "You put an awful lot of strain on MIDO-chan every time you get killed. She's got that same crazy status effect that you do."

Himuro's displeasure sounded only as low grumbling, but then he seized upon his last line of defense, "I can't possibly wear that robe. It's obviously made for a woman. There must be an equipment restriction."

Midori bent her head again and paged through the item's description, and then turned up with a bright smile on her face. "No, it really doesn't have any gender restrictions. Anyone in a mage job class can wear this robe." She sighed, apparently quite relieved. "I know it looks very silly, and I'm sorry you have to wear it, REI-san, but I'd much rather you look silly and be well, than look serious and be dead."

Masuda leaned forward and took a gander at the item information window himself and let out a low whistle as he tapped lightly on the part of the display directly underneath the currency sign.

"It seems like the Radiant Robe is a little out of our current price range though, MIDO-chan."

Midori seemed unperturbed as she fluttered one hand at Masuda lightly.

"Oh, don't worry, MASU-san," she insisted brightly, with another girlish wink. "That's the easy part!"

* * *

><p>Near the open part of Castillian's market square, Midori commenced unequipping her armor. As soon as Himuro realized what she was about, he put himself in between her skin and the viewing public.<p>

"YUME-san," he sputtered indignantly, "You cannot simply change your clothes in the middle of the street."

Midori shrugged and continued about her business, as she knew, and Masuda knew besides, that however much Himuro might have objected to her actions, he was not willing to lay hands on her to stop them.

"Oh, I'm not changing clothes," she assured Himuro lightly, "I'm just taking some off. Besides, ENTERTAINERs have to be prepared for a quick costume change under any circumstances."

Secretly, Masuda thought it was lucky that he didn't have to treat Himuro for the 'High Blood Pressure' status effect regularly, given the combination of Midori's attention-getting class (and undergarments) and her pleasing, if flighty, personality.

In the end, Midori did actually change her clothes, right there on the street. Her costume change mainly consisted of her squirming out of her regular velvet tunic and skirt and into a mostly transparent, swishy cape and gauzy pantaloons trimmed with little golden bells. Her terminal, forbidden clothing layer, the 'fairy bustier' was quite obviously on display in such a costume, so Masuda thought she'd been truthful with Himuro. She wasn't really changing clothes so much as just taking some off.

Jingling all the way, she flipped a red top hat over so that it sat on its crown and plopped it right down in the middle of the clearing, setting up a donation window directly above it.

Then, making sure that her electric mandolin and her nymph microphone were equipped, she threw up both her hands and shouted, "Hello everyone, and welcome to YUME MIDO's guerilla live!"

At this announcement the small group of interested onlookers that had gathered cheered, and Masuda watched as one young man elbowed another and said, "Isn't that MIDO, the singing princess from the Kingdom of Cloveria?"

Midori lost no time bursting into song and dancing in place as she played a long lick on her electric mandolin. At the end of her first song, the crowd, considerably bigger by this point, erupted into applause, and a wild voice shouted out, "MIDO-CHAN, I LOVE YOU!"

Masuda found he had to physically restrain Himuro from investigating the source of this disturbance as the princess's self-appointed security detail. Although not very formidable in a physical fight, Himuro was perfectly capable of knocking the head of a regular villager in with this staff, and Masuda did not relish explaining such a turn of events to the town guard. In the end, Masuda had to restrain Himuro four more times.

Although Himuro might appear very in control of himself, when it came to the subject of Yumeno Midori, Princess of the Kingdom of Cloveria, Masuda found that he was forced to be the level-headed one.

Midori performed twelve songs in her guerilla live and gave two encores. At the end of her show, after the last fan had been granted her glorious curlicue autograph, the top hat was so bulging with cash that Masuda had no worries that they'd be able to afford the Radiant Robe and a lot of other sundries besides.

Midori was elated that her show had been successful, but completely exhausted, and she collapsed into an unsuspecting Himuro's arms. Himuro's mouth turned down at the corners and he reprimanded her, but Masuda did not have to be clairvoyant to realize that the tall, serious mage was actually well pleased to carry the exhausted princess on his back, gauzy pantaloons, jingling bells, and all. Masuda rolled his eyes, but did not comment. There was no reason to comment. If he _actually _commented on all the occasions when he _might _have commented, the world would have suffered a deluge of his comments and been destroyed.

And so Masuda was left to collect Midori's hat full of money, and lead the way back to the market stall, where his strange little party might come to own the rare treasure that was the Radiant Robe.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

As is probably pretty obvious at this point, this is the obligatory episode filled with everyone's wacky dreams. Himuro's dream is first, Midori's dream is second, and Masuda's dream is last. I had a great time writing this chapter. It was exciting putting it together, and thinking about which sections said what I wanted to say in the best way, and which ones complimented each other the very best. Several sections did not make it into the final chapter, as ultimately, I only needed three parts. Sections cut from this chapter include: a Magical Girl story, a Super Robot adventure, and naturally a Shinsengumi/Warring States/Some Period Japanese Drama.

I hope the fact that this chapter is a sequence of dreams doesn't keep you from enjoying it. has been planned this way for a very long time. We will return to our regularly scheduled story in chapter Five, which I will begin writing immediately, I promise, Moth XD.

**Edit:** If you haven't seen it yet, you might want to go back to the Tokimeki section and tick the ratings to All, so you can see M rated stories, because lo' and behold, there is one.


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